.
They appeared together in public—this Mr. Read enjoined "It was due to his reputation, people should not say that his daughter's privileges exceeded his ward's." Further than this he did not interfere. He saw them only at meal-times, and in the evening; then Josephine presided over the tea-tray with skill and grace, and amused him, if he wished it, by reading, singing or talking. Ida did as she pleased. There were no requirements, no privations. In the eyes of the world her situation was unexceptionable. They knew nothing of the covert sneers which smiled down any tendency to what the torpid minds of the father and daughter considered undue enthusiasm; their sarcastic notice of her "singularities," their studied variance with her views;—but to her, bondage and cruelty would have been more tolerable. Yet this mocking surveillance—this certainty of ridicule, could not always check the earnest expression of a grasping intellect and ardent temperament; and there were not a few who frequented the house, who preferred the piquancy of her conversation, when they could draw her out of the snow-caverns of her reserve, to the trite common-places and artificial spirits of Miss Read.
Among these was Mr. Dermott, an Irish gentleman of considerable scientific renown, and a traveller of some note; hard upon forty years of age, but enjoying life with the zest of twenty. Ida's intelligent countenance had pleased him at their introduction, and having letters to Mr. Read, he embraced every opportunity to improve the acquaintance.
"I shall not go to school to-day," said Josephine, one morning, "father expects Mr. Dermott and several other gentlemen to dine with him, and I cannot be spared. He says you must come home in time for dinner."
"As school breaks up at three, and you will not dine before five, there was no need to issue the command;" said Ida, irritated at her arrogant tone.
"Very well, I have delivered the message."
Mr. Read was dissatisfied that his ward did not enter the drawing-room until dinner was announced. "It did not look well,"—and her nonchalant air and slight recognition of the party, did not "speak well for his bringing up." But the current veered before meal was over. The fowls were under-done, and the potatoes soaked. His glance of displeasure at his daughter was received with such imperturbability, that he chafed at the impossibility of moving her, and his desire to render somebody uncomfortable. The latter wish was not left ungratified. One after another felt the influence of his lowering brow, and imitated his silence, until Mr. Dermott and Ida were the only ones who maintained a connected conversation. He talked fluently with the humor peculiar to his countrymen, and had succeeded in interesting his listener. She had naturally a happy laugh, which in earlier years rung out in merry music; and as the unusual sound startled him from time to time, Mr. Read took it as a personal affront. Could not she see that he was out of temper? He had punished the rest for the cook's misdeeds, how dare she, while they sat 'neath the thunder cloud of his magnificent wrath, sport in the sunshine? It was audacious bravado. She should rue it ere long. Josephine readily obeyed his signal to leave the table, so soon as it could be done with a semblance of propriety. "I will hear the rest, by and by," said Ida to Mr. Dermott, "au revoir." Neither of the girls spoke after quitting the dining-room. Josephine lay upon a lounge, with half-closed lids, apparently drowsy or fatigued, in reality, wakeful and watching. Ida walked back and forth, humming an Irish air—pleased and thoughtful. Then taking from the book-case a volume of "Travels," she employed herself in looking it over.
"See!" said she, at Mr. Dermott's reappearance, "it is as I thought. This author's account varies, in some respects, from yours; and at the peril of my place in your good graces, I must declare my prejudices to be with him. A spot so celebrated, so sacred in its associations, cannot be as uninteresting as you would have me to think. Come, confess, that the jolting camel and surly guide were accessories to your discontent."
Josephine lost the answer, and much that followed. She was joined by young Pemberton, a fop of the first water, with sense enough to make him uneasy in the society of the gifted, and meanness to rejoice in their discomfiture and misfortune. For the rest, he was weak and hot-headed, a compound of conceit and malice. Time was when he admired Ida. He had an indefinite notion that a clever wife would reflect lustre upon him; and a very decided appreciation of her more shining and substantial charms.
Her repulse was a mortal offence: small minds never forget, much less pardon a rebuke to their vanity, and he inly swore revenge. But how to get it? She rose superior to his witless sarcasms, and more pointed slights; reversing the arrows towards himself, and his mortification heated into hatred. Josephine was aware of this feeling, and its cause; and while despising, in a man, a weakness to which she was herself a prey, foreseeing that he might prove a convenient tool, she attached him to her by suasives and flatteries.
"It is a positive relief to talk to you, Miss Josephine," he yawned, "I am surfeited with literature and foreigners. These travelled follows are outrageous bores, with their bushy moustachios and outlandish lingo. How the ladies can fawn upon them as they do, I cannot comprehend."
"Do not condemn us all for the failings of a part. There are those who prefer pure gold to gilded trash."
"For your sake, I will make some exceptions," with a "killing" look. "But what do you imagine to be the object of that flirtation? No young lady of prudence or proper self-respect, would encourage so boldly the attentions of a stranger. Supposing him to be what he represents, (a thing by no means certain,) she cannot intend to marry him—a man old enough to be her father!"
"But, 'unison of tastes,' 'concord of souls,' etc., will go far towards reconciling her to the disparity of years," observed Josephine, ironically; not sorry to strike upon this tender point. He tried to laugh, but with indifferent success.
Ida's voice reached them, and they stopped to listen.
"I am afraid my conceptions of Eastern life and scenery are more poetical than correct. I picture landscapes sleeping in warm, rich, 'Syrian sunshine,' 'sandal groves and bowers of spice,'
'Ruined shrines, and towers that seem
The relics of some splendid dream,'—
such a Fairy Land as ignorance and imagination create."
"The Utopia of one who studies Lalla Rookh more than 'Eastern Statistics,' or 'Incidents of Travel,'" said Mr. Dermott, smiling. "Yet Moore's descriptions are not so much overwrought as some suppose. His words came continually to my tongue. He has imbibed the true spirit of Oriental poetry; the melancholy, which, like the ghost of a dead age, broods over that oldest of lands; the passion flushing under their tropical sun; their wealth of imagery. Lalla Rookh reads like a translation from the original Persian. The wonder is that he has never been self-tempted to visit the 'Vale of Cashmere' in person."
"Campbell, too, having immortalized Wyoming, will not cross the ocean to behold it," said Ida.
There was a consultation between the confederates, and Pemberton crossed to Ida's chair, with a smirk that belied the fire in his eye.
"Excuse me, Mr. Dermott—Miss Ida, I am commissioned to inquire of you the authorship and meaning of this quotation—
'Deeply, darkly, desperately blue!'"
It is impossible to convey a just impression of the offensive tone and emphasis with which this impertinence was uttered. The quick-witted Irishman saw through the design in an instant. "It is from a Scotch author," said he, before Ida could reply, "and the rhyme runs after this fashion—
'Feckless, fairlie, farcically fou!'"
and not deigning a second glance at the questioner, he continued his account of a visit he had paid to Moore. The object of this merciless retort stood for a second, in doubt as to its meaning, and then walked off, still in incertitude. Ida's laugh, while it might have been in response to Mr. Dermott's story assured Josephine that her end was unaccomplished, before her messenger had delivered his lame return.
"She understood me, and it cut pretty deeply, but that puppy of a paddy answered for her. He repeated the next line, too, 'from a Scotch author,' he said, but I believe he made it up."
"What was it?" asked Josephine.
"'Fairly, farcically fou,' or something like that.