Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James
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 poor Duke,” cried MacNaghten, “he can bear it no longer. See, there he goes, in defiance of rain and wind, to take his walk in the shrubbery!”
“And mon pauvre mari – go with him,” said my mother, in a tone of lamentation that made all the hearers burst out a-laughing. “Ah, I know why you Irish are all so domestic,” added she, – “c’est le climat!”
“Will you allow us nothing to the credit of our fidelity, – to our attachments, madame?” said Rutledge, who, while he continued to talk, never took his eyes off the two figures, who now walked side by side in the shrubbery.
“It is a capricious kind of thing, after all, is your Irish fidelity,” said Polly. “Your love is generally but another form of self-esteem; you marry a woman because you can be proud of her beauty, her wit, her manners, and her accomplishments, and you are faithful because you never get tired in the indulgence of your own vanity.”
“How kind of you is it, then, to let us never want for the occasion of indulging it,” said Rutledge, half slyly.
“I don’t quite agree with you, Miss Polly,” said Mac-Naghten, after a pause, in which he seemed to be reflecting over her words; “I think most men – Irishmen, I mean – marry to please themselves. They may make mistakes, of course, – I don’t pretend to say that they always choose well; but it is right to bear in mind that they are not free agents, and cannot have whom they please to wife.”
“It is better with us,” broke in my mother. “You marry one you have never seen before; you have nothing of how you call ‘exultation,’ point des idées romantiques; you are delighted with all the little ‘soins’ and attentions of your husband, who has, at least, one inestimable merit, – he is never familiar.”
“How charming!” said Rutledge, with mock seriousness.
“Is it not?” continued she, not detecting the covert irony of his tone; “it is your intimité, – how you call it?”
“Intimacy.”
“Oui,” said she, smiling, but not trusting herself to repeat the word. “C’est cela, – that destroys your happiness.”
“Egad! I ‘d as soon be a bachelor,” broke in MacNaghten, “if I only were to look at my wife with an opera-glass across the theatre, or be permitted to kiss her kid glove on her birthday.”
“What he say, – why you laugh?” cried my mother, who could not follow the rapidity of his utterance.
“Mr. MacNaghten prefers homeliness to refinement,” said Polly.
“Oui, you are right, my dear,” added my mother; “it is more refined. And then, instead of all that ‘tracasserie’ you have about your house, and your servants, and the thousand little ‘inconvenance de ménage,’ you have one whom you consult on your toilette, your equipage, your ‘coiffure,’ – in fact, in all affairs of good taste. Voilà Walter, par exemple: he never dérange me for a moment, – I hope I never ennuyé him.”
“Quite right, – perfectly right,” said Polly, with a well-assumed gravity.
“By Jove, that’s only single harness work, after all,” said MacNaghten; “I’d rather risk a kick, now and then, and have another beside me to tug at this same burden of daily life.”
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