Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2. Lever Charles James
her only reply, and turning towards the garden, she called to her friend: —
“Come here, dearest, and instruct my ignorance upon your national customs; but first let me present to you, – never know his name, – the Chevalier de – What is it?”
The glass door opened as she spoke; a tall and graceful figure entered, and turning suddenly round, showed me the features of Lucy Dashwood. We both stood opposite each other, each mute with amazement. My feelings let me not attempt to convey; shame, for the first moment stronger than aught else, sent the blood rushing to my face and temples, and the next I was cold and pale as death. As for her, I cannot guess at what passed in her mind. She curtsied deeply to me, and with a half-smile of scarce recognition passed by me, and walked towards a window.
“Comme vous êtes amiable!” said the lively Portuguese, who comprehended little of this dumb show; “here have I been flattering myself what friends you’d be the very moment you meet, and now you’ll not even look at each other.”
What was to be done? The situation was every instant growing more and more embarrassing; nothing but downright effrontery could get through with it now; and never did a man’s heart more fail him than did mine at this conjuncture. I made the’ effort, however, and stammered out certain unmeaning commonplaces. Inez replied, and I felt myself conversing with the headlong recklessness of one marching to a scaffold, a coward’s fear at his heart, while he essayed to seem careless and indifferent.
Anxious to reach what I esteemed safe ground, I gladly adverted to the campaign; and at last, hurried on by the impulse to cover my embarrassment, was describing some skirmish with a French outpost. Without intending, I had succeeded in exciting the senhora’s interest, and she listened with sparkling eye and parted lips to the description of a sweeping charge in which a square was broken, and several prisoners carried off. Warming with the eager avidity of her attention, I grew myself more excited, when just as my narrative reached its climax, Miss Dashwood walked gently towards the bell, rang it, and ordered her carriage. The tone of perfect nonchalance of the whole proceeding struck me dumb; I faltered, stammered, hesitated, and was silent. Donna Inez turned from one to the other of us with a look of unfeigned astonishment and I heard her mutter to herself something like a reflection upon “national eccentricities.” Happily, however, her attention was now exclusively turned towards her friend, and while assisting her to shawl, and extorting innumerable promises of an early visit, I got a momentary reprieve; the carriage drew up also, and as the gravel flew right and left beneath the horses’ feet, the very noise and bustle relieved me. “Adios,” then said Inez, as she kissed her for the last time, while she motioned to me to escort her to her carriage. I advanced, stopped, made another step forward, and again grew irresolute; but Miss Dashwood speedily terminated the difficulty; for making me a formal curtsey, she declined my scarce-proffered attention, and left the room.
As she did so, I perceived that on passing the table, her eyes fell upon the paper I had been scribbling over so long, and I thought that for an instant an expression of ineffable scorn seemed to pass across her features, save which – and perhaps even in this I was mistaken – her manner was perfectly calm, easy, and indifferent.
Scarce had the carriage rolled from the door, when the senhora, throwing herself upon her chair, clapped her hands in childish ecstasy, while she fell into a fit of laughing that I thought would never have an end. “Such a scene!” cried she; “I would not have lost it for the world; what cordiality! what empressement to form acquaintance! I shall never forget it, Monsieur le Chevalier; your national customs seem to run sadly in extremes. One would have thought you deadly enemies; and poor me, after a thousand delightful plans about you both!”
As she ran on thus, scarce able to control her mirth at each sentence, I walked the room with impatient strides, now, resolving to hasten after the carriage, stop it, explain in a few words how all had happened, and then fly from her forever; then the remembrance of her cold, impassive look crossed me, and I thought that one bold leap into the Tagus might be the shortest and easiest solution to all my miseries. Perfect abasement, thorough self-contempt had broken all my courage, and I could have cried like a child. What I said, or how I comforted myself after, I know not; but my first consciousness came to me as I felt myself running at the top of my speed far upon the road towards Lisbon.
CHAPTER XI
It may easily be imagined that I had little inclination to keep my promise of dining that day with Sir George Dashwood. However, there was nothing else for it; the die was cast, – my prospects as regarded Lucy were ruined forever. We were not, we never could be anything to each other; and as for me, the sooner I braved my altered fortunes the better; and after all, why should I call them altered. She evidently never had cared for me; and even supposing that my fervent declaration of attachment had interested her, the apparent duplicity and falseness of my late conduct could only fall the more heavily upon me.
I endeavored to philosophize myself into calmness and indifference. One by one I exhausted every argument for my defence, which, however ingeniously put forward, brought no comfort to my own conscience. I pleaded the unerring devotion of my heart, the uprightness of my motives, and when called on for the proofs, – alas! except the blue scarf I wore in memory of another, and my absurd conduct at the villa, I had none. From the current gossip of Lisbon, down to my own disgraceful folly, all, all was against me.
Honesty of intention, rectitude of purpose, may be, doubtless they are, admirable supports to a rightly constituted mind; but even then they must come supported by such claims to probability as make the injured man feel he has not lost the sympathy of all his fellows. Now, I had none of these, had even my temperament, broken by sickness and harassed by unlucky conjectures, permitted my appreciating them.
I endeavored to call my wounded pride to my aid, and thought over the glance of haughty disdain she gave me as she passed on to her carriage; but even this turned against me, and a humiliating sense of my own degraded position sank deeply into my heart. “This impression at least,” thought I, “must be effaced. I cannot permit her to believe – ”
“His Excellency is waiting dinner, sir,” said a lackey, introducing a finely powdered head gently within the door. I looked at my watch, it was eight o’clock; so snatching my sabre, and shocked at my delay, I hastily followed the servant down-stairs, and thus at once cut short my deliberations.
The man must be but little observant or deeply sunk in his own reveries, who, arriving half-an-hour too late for dinner, fails to detect in the faces of the assembled and expectant guests a very palpable expression of discontent and displeasure. It is truly a moment of awkwardness, and one in which few are found to manage with success; the blushing, hesitating, blundering apology of the absent man, is scarcely better than the ill-affected surprise of the more practised offender. The bashfulness of the one is as distasteful as the cool impertinence of the other; both are so thoroughly out of place, for we are thinking of neither; our thoughts are wandering to cold soups and rechaufféd pâtés, and we neither care for nor estimate the cause, but satisfy our spleen by cursing the offender.
Happily for me I was clad in a triple insensibility to such feelings, and with an air of most perfect unconstraint and composure walked into a drawing-room where about twenty persons were busily discussing what peculiar amiability in my character could compensate for my present conduct.
“At last, O’Malley, at last!” said Sir George. “Why, my dear boy, how very late you are!”
I muttered something about a long walk, – distance from Lisbon, etc.
“Ah! that was it. I was right, you see!” said an old lady in a spangled turban, as she whispered something to her friend beside her, who appeared excessively shocked at the information conveyed; while a fat, round-faced little general, after eying me steadily through his glass, expressed a sotto voce wish that I was upon his staff. I felt my cheek reddening at the moment, and stared around me like one whose trials were becoming downright insufferable, when happily dinner was announced, and terminated my embarrassment.
As the party filed past, I perceived that Miss Dashwood was not among them; and with a heart relieved for the moment by the circumstance, and inventing a hundred conjectures to account