Roland Cashel, Volume I (of II). Lever Charles James
its cabinets of buhl, and the book-shelves so coquettishly curtained with Malines lace, is the common property of the two sisters whom we so lately introduced to your notice.
There were they wont to sit for hours after the return from a ball, discussing the people they had met, their dress, their manner, their foibles and flirtations; criticising with no mean acuteness all the varied games of match-making mammas and intriguing aunts, and canvassing the schemes and snares so rife around them. And oh, ye simple worshippers of muslin-robed innocence! oh, ye devoted slaves of ringleted loveliness and blooming freshness! bethink ye what wily projects lie crouching in hearts that would seem the very homes of careless happiness; what calculations; what devices; how many subtleties that only beauty wields, or simple man is vanquished by!
It was considerably past midnight as the two girls sat at the fire, their dressing-gowns and slippered feet showing that they had prepared for bed; but the long luxuriant hair, as yet uncurled, flowed in heavy masses on their neck and shoulders. They did not, as usual, converse freely together; a silence and a kind of constraint sat upon each, and although Olivia held a book before her, it was less for the purpose of reading than as a screen against the fire, while her sister sat with folded arms and gently drooping head, apparently lost in thought. It was after a very lengthened silence, and in a voice which showed that the speaker was following up some train of thought, Miss Kennyfeck said, —
“And do you really think him handsome, Olivia?”
“Of whom are you speaking, dear?” said Olivia, with the very softest accent.
Miss Kennyfeck started; her pale cheeks became slightly red as, with a most keen irony, she replied, “Could you not guess? Can I mean any one but Mr. Clare Jones?”
“Oh, he’s a downright fright,” answered the other; “but what could have made you think of him?”
“I was not thinking of him, nor were you either, sister dear,” said Miss Kennyfeck, fixing her eyes full upon her; “we were both thinking of the same person. Come, what use in such subterfuges? Honesty, Livy, may not be the ‘best policy,’ but it has one great advantage, – it saves a deal of time; and so I repeat my question, do you think him handsome?”
“If you mean Mr. Cashel, dearest,” said the younger, half bashfully, “I rather incline to say he is. His eyes are very good; his forehead and brow – ”
“There, – no inventory, I beg, – the man is very well-looking, I dare say, but I own he strikes me as tant soit peu sauvage. Don’t you think so?”
“True, his manners – ”
“Why, he has none; the man has a certain rakish, free-and-easy demeanor that, with somewhat more breeding, would rise as high as ‘tigerism,’ but now is detestable vulgarity.”
“Oh, dearest, you are severe.”
“I rather suspect that you are partial.”
“I, my dear! not I, in the least. He is not, by any means, the style of person I like. He can be very amusing, perhaps; he certainly is very odd, very original.”
“He is very rich, Livy,” said the elder sister, with a most dry gravity.
“That can scarcely be called a fault, still less a misfortune,” replied Olivia, slyly.
“Well, well, let us have done with aphorisms, and speak openly. If you are really pleased with his manner and address, say so at once, and I ‘ll promise never to criticise too closely a demeanor which, I vow, does not impress me highly, – only be candid.”
“But I do not see any occasion for such candor, my dear. He is no more to me than he is to you. I ask no protestations from you about this Mr. Roland Cashel.”
Miss Kennyfeck bit her lip and seemed to repress a rising temptation to reply, but was silent for a moment, when she said, in a careless, easy tone, —
“Do you know, Livy dearest, that this same manolo you danced this evening is not by any means a graceful performance to look at, at least when danced with long, sweeping drapery, flapping here and flouncing there. It may suit those half-dressed Mexican damsels who want to display a high arched instep and a rounded ankle, and who know that they are not transgressing the ordinary limits of decorum in the display; but certainly your friend Mr. Softly did not accord all his approval. Did you remark him?”
“I did not; I was too much engaged in learning the figure: but Mr. Softly disapproves of all dancing.”
“Oh, I know he does,” yawned Miss Kennyfeck, as if the very mention of his name suggested sleep; “the dear man has his own notions of pleasantry, – little holy jokes about Adam and Eve. There is nothing so intolerable to me as the insipid playfulness of your young parson, except, perhaps, the coarse fun of your rising barrister. How I hate Mr. Clare Jones!”
“He is very underbred.”
“He is worse; the rudest person I ever met, – so familiar.”
“Why will he always insist on shaking hands?”
“Why will he not at least wash his own, occasionally?”
“And then his jests from the Queen’s Bench, – the last mot– I’m sure I often wished it were so literally – of some stupid Chief Justice. Well, really, in comparison, your savage friend is a mirror of good looks and good manners.”
“Good night, my dear,” said Olivia, rising, as though to decline a renewal of the combat.
“Good night,” echoed her sister, bluntly, “and pleasant dreams of ‘Roland the brave, Roland the true;’ the latter quality being the one more in request at this moment.” And so, humming the well-known air, she took her candle and retired.
CHAPTER VIII. LOVE v. LAW
Ay! marry – they have wiles,
Compared to which, our schemes are honesty.
Notwithstanding all that we hear said against castle-building, how few among the unbought pleasures of life are so amusing, nor are we certain that these shadowy speculations – these “white lies” that we tell to our own conscience – are not so many incentives to noble deeds and generous actions. These “imaginary conversations” lift us out of the jog-trot path of daily intercourse, and call up hopes and aspirations that lie buried under the heavy load of wearisome commonplaces of which life is made up, and thus permit a man, immersed as he may be in the fatigues of a profession, or a counting-house, harassed by law, or worried by the Three per Cents, to be a hero to his own heart at least for a few minutes once a week.
But if “castle-building” be so pleasurable when a mere visionary scheme, what is it when it comes associated with all the necessary conditions for accomplishment, – when not alone the plan and elevation of the edifice are there, but all the materials and every appliance to realize the conception?
Just fancy yourself “two or three and twenty,” waking out of a sound and dreamless sleep, to see the mellow sun of an autumnal morning straining its rays through the curtains of your bedroom. Conceive the short and easy struggle by which, banishing all load of cares and duties in which you were once immersed, you spring, as by a bound, to the joyous fact that you are the owner of a princely fortune, with health and ardent spirit, a temper capable of, nay, eager for engagement, a fearless courage, and a heart unchilled. Think of this, and say, Is not the first waking half-hour of such thoughts the brightest spot of a whole existence? Such was the frame of mind in which our hero awoke, and lay for some time to revel in! We could not, if we would, follow the complex tissue of day-dreams that wandered over every clime, and in the luxuriant rapture of power created scenes of pleasure, of ingredients the most far-fetched and remote. The “actual” demands our attention more urgently than the “ideal,” so that we are constrained to follow the unpoetical steps of so ignoble a personage as Mr. Phillis, – Cashel’s new valet, – who now broke in upon his master’s reveries as he entered with hot water and the morning papers.
“What have you got there?” cried Cashel, not altogether