CHAPTER XXXIV.
"THE SLAVE OF BEAUTY."
"Here's the comrade of your glove, Miss Dido," said Biddy, descending into the hall, where the three girls, attired in their best summer dresses (being about to set forth for a tennis party at Ballyredmond), were impatiently awaiting her.
"Will I do?" inquired Dido, as she received her property. "Or is my hat too shabby? This is its third summer, you know!"
"An' deed, an' you'll do finely; 'tis only too grand you are! What call is there to be dressing just for the ould gentleman and Miss Calderwood, and maybe Misther Barry, that ye can see any day of the week without putting yourselves to any rounds at all?" demanded Biddy in an acrimonious key.
"Oh, but this is to be quite a grand affair," protested her younger nursling. "We have had three days' invitation. It's my opinion," glancing at her pretty cousin, "that this 'at home' is given for you, Helen. Mr. Redmond has been here twice this week; you have bewitched him."
"I would not put it past him! for nothing grows old with a man but his clothes," cried Biddy scornfully. "And shure he might give something dacent when he went about it; I've no opinion of these grass parties and chape entertainments. God be with the good ould times, when no one was axed to cross the door, under a dinner or a ball; indade, Redmond's own father used to give the height of high feedin' and kep' a butt of claret standing in the hall, just ready to your hand. But now, when you go out, no one even so much as axes, if you have a mouth on you?—for—by a drink of tay, that wake, that ye can see the bottom of the cup!"
Notwithstanding this gloomy sketch, the three young ladies (to whom this "chape entertainment" was a delightful novelty) were not the least disheartened, and set off to walk across the demesne in the highest possible spirits, leaving Biddy and her apple-cheeked niece filling up the doorway, and gazing after them with the affectionate complacency of people who were surveying a creditable personal possession.
"There's not their like in the county!" exclaimed Sally, as she folded her massive arms across her apron strings.
"No, nor in ten counties! and what's the good of it all; will ye tell me that?" inquired her aunt peevishly. "There's Miss Dido, with the walk of a duchess and the voice of a thrush, and Miss Helen, a real beauty, and Katie not too bad entirely,—and not a sign of any one, watching wan of them!"
"I think Misther Barry has an eye on Miss Denis," insinuated Sally timidly.
"Is it that spalpeen? An' much good may it do him! She would not look at the same side of the road as him," returned Biddy fiercely. "He would not dar' to ax her. Shure she's the only one of them all knows how to talk to him, and that quenches him rightly."
"That's true for you," assented Sally, nodding her head in grave acknowledgment of this indisputable fact.
"It's just killing me," continued the old woman, "to see them young ladies wasting their looks and their years here, slaving in the house, and garden, like blacks. What's to be the end of it, at all, at all?"
"The end will be that the masther will burn us all in our beds yet," replied Sally with angry promptitude. "What is he up to now?" glancing at one of the tower windows, out of which vast volumes of dense black smoke were curling in lazy clouds.
"Oh, the Lord only knows!" retorted her aunt impatiently, as she turned and walked into the hall with an unusually sour expression on her jovial old countenance.
"There's no daling with the likes of him," she muttered as she descended to the lower regions, "for he will nayther do wan thing, or the other; he won't go properly out of his mind, and he won't lave it alone; and he has me fairly bothered, and me heart is broke, with his mischeevous contrivances."
Meanwhile, the three girls walked over the hill, and passed through Dillon's gate into the precincts of Ballyredmond, a fine park of seemingly endless extent, through which a beautifully-kept avenue wound like a white ribbon, by clumps of beeches, rows of lime trees, and great solitary oaks. Nearer the house beds of brilliant flowers broke the monotony of the turf, and a long gravelled terrace was crowned by an ugly but dignified-looking mansion, that seemed an appropriate centre for the surrounding scene.
The Misses Sheridan and Miss Denis were the last arrivals, and were received by Miss Redmond in the pleasure-ground. They found her sitting under a tree in her bath chair, arrayed in her best white shawl and a picturesque garden bonnet. She was a pretty old lady, with white hair, an ivory skin, and soft, caressing manners, and she greeted the three chaperoneless (to coin a word) girls with evident pleasure. Not so Miss Calderwood, the deputy hostess; her welcome was by no means so gracious or so genial. She gave the two Sheridans a limp shake-hands, and bestowed a curt bow and a long stare upon their cousin, the governess (who was looking remarkably pretty and well-dressed in one of the costumes upon which Mrs. Creery had once fixed her elderly affections). Evidently she did not think that Miss Denis was entitled to participate in the advantages of her acquaintance and patronage. However, Mr. Redmond more than atoned for his ward's deficiencies. He led Helen to a seat, introduced her to several of the county people, fussed about her rather too assiduously with tea and cakes and other light refreshments, and finally took share of the same rustic bench, and engaged her entire attention.
Biddy's dismal forebodings had been brilliantly refuted. We notice the party from the Rectory (a considerable contingent), several remote families, half-a-dozen officers from a garrison town, and last, but by no means least, our friend Barry, standing beside Miss Calderwood, with his hands behind his back, and such an air of serious criticism in his port, that one would imagine he was in an African slave-market, and contemplated the purchase of one or two of Mr. Redmond's guests.
Mr. Redmond himself never left Helen's side, and coolly (and I consider selfishly) dismissed all overtures respecting a game of tennis, with a bland wave of his hand. His beautiful young protégée, the desired partner of several eligible tennis players, was simply not allowed to have a voice in the matter.
"We are very happy here! Just go away, my good fellow, and leave us alone," was his complacent reply to each eager suitor. "You and I," to Helen, "will do better than that! we will stroll round the grounds together by-and-by, when all these energetic idiots have settled down to what they consider the business of life."
It never seemed to occur to him that Helen would have preferred to join the said band of energetic idiots, or to have liked the company of a younger swain—and presently he marched her off—to make a grand tour of the greenhouses and gardens.
Although Mr. Redmond was a little, round, old gentleman, who had white eyebrows, and wore an ostentatious brown wig—his heart was as young, as susceptible, and as fickle as if he was three-and-twenty; he delighted in a pretty face, and especially in the company of a lovely, smiling girl, like his present companion, who, besides all her other charms, proved to be a most accomplished listener. As they walked, he talked, talked incessantly; indeed, the garrulous old personage became most gratuitously confidential about his property, his neighbours, and his nephew. "My nephew" was dragged headlong into every other sentence,—conversationally you came face to face with "my nephew" at each corner; his opinion was quoted on all conceivable subjects, from politics down to black currant jam. Another listener might have been a little bored, and even irritated, but the pretty tall girl in white listened with a greedy attention, of which she angrily told herself she ought to be heartily ashamed.—The world was but a small place after all! Here, in what her aunt Julia called the "wilds," she was strolling along, tête-à-tête with Gilbert Lisle's uncle, undoubtedly the very identical old gentleman whom he had mentioned as carrying on an ink feud with his father, but who was somewhat partial to him. Partial was no word for it! infatuation was nearer to the mark.
"I'm sure all those young fellows are mad with me for carrying you off," and he chuckled delightedly. "But, after all, it's no reason that because I'm an old fogey I'm not to have a pleasant afternoon, too, eh? From the time I could walk alone, I was always the slave of Beauty!" Here he doffed his hat, and made Helen a most courtly bow, at which she blushed and laughed.
"Yes, the slave of Beauty; all the same," resuming his hat with a flourish; "I never married, you see! The fact was, I butterflied about too long, and then it was winter before I knew where I was! We are not a marrying family; there's my sister and myself, and my nephew, I'm always preaching to him, but he laughs when I talk to him, and tells me to go and marry myself—impudent rascal, that's a nice way to speak to his uncle, eh? All the same, he is a fine fellow, as true as steel, and a more honourable, upright gentleman never drew breath; whoever gets him for a husband will be a lucky girl."
The corners of his companion's pretty lips curved somewhat scornfully, and she said to herself, "Shall I explode a social torpedo under this innocent old gentleman's feet, and say I know your illustrious nephew, he asked me to marry him, and instantly took ship and left me; although he swore that he would return, as surely as the sun rose in the heavens! Would it be agreeable to her companion to learn that his paragon's idea of honour was more elastic than he imagined?"
"Two or three times," continued Mr. Redmond, "I've tried to marry my nephew to some nice girl, and it has always been a dead failure, I've picked out a beauty, had her to stay, got up riding parties, driving parties, and even moonlight picnics (as if moonlight picnics were irresistible), and it was all no go. Just as I thought everything was arranged, he would slip through my fingers like a piece of soap!" (precisely Helen's own experience). "Well, now I want to ask your advice. What do you think of those two yew-trees?" he demanded with rather bewildering suddenness.
"I—candidly, I don't admire them; they remind one of a church-yard."
"Exactly, and as I don't want to be reminded of anything so deuced unpleasant: down they shall come! And, now, what's your opinion of these new flower-beds they have just cut out in this ribbon garden?"
"I think they are not sharp enough at the corners; they are too much the shape of biscuits,—the 'People's mixed.'"
"So they are! and shall we have them filled with pink verbenas, or crimson geraniums?"
"Crimson—that lovely new, deep shade."
"And crimson it shall be! Allow me to give you this rose!" suddenly plucking one as he spoke. "My dear Miss Denis, I see that our tastes are identical.—I only wish I was a young man for your sake."
His companion made no response, but on the whole she thought she preferred him as he was.
By this time they had encountered various other promenading couples, and in a shady walk they came face to face with Barry and Miss Calderwood, and the latter, instead of passing by on the other side, with her nose in the air, halted directly in front of Helen, and said most abruptly,—
"Miss Denis, Mr. Sheridan tells me that you were in the Andamans with Gilbert Lisle,—and knew him intimately!"
Helen coloured vividly, partly at this sudden accost and partly because of that sting in the tail of the sentence, that thrice underlined word "intimately;" and Mr. Redmond, wheeling swiftly round so as to face her, ejaculated, "God bless my soul! you don't tell me so."
"Yes, I knew a Mr. Lisle in the Andamans," admitted Helen reluctantly.
"Only fancy! How immensely funny!" drawled Miss Calderwood.
To Helen there had been nothing specially amusing in the acquaintance, so she closed her lips firmly and held her peace.
"Why—why—I've been talking to you about him for the last hour, and you never told me this!" cried Mr. Redmond, eyeing her with an air of angry suspicion. "Eh, what?"
"You mentioned no name," faltered the young lady, feeling that verily this quibbling with the truth was as bad as any downright lie; but confronted by three curious faces, with the eyes of Barry—of Gilbert Lisle's uncle—and Gilbert Lisle's betrothed, fixed imperatively on hers—was she to appease their greedy curiosity and boldly confess the painful reason of her silence? was she to proclaim the humiliating fact that they were all staring at the girl who had been jilted by that honourable gentleman?
"Mentioned no name—neither I did! And how were you to know? Eh, what? Well, and what did you think of my nephew?" inquired the loquacious old relative.
At this point-blank query Miss Calderwood flashed a satirical look at Miss Denis, as much as to say, "What a silly unnecessary question!" But Helen met her eyes with proud steadiness.
"I think most people liked Mr. Lisle," she answered with well-assumed carelessness.
"And how long was he at the Andamans?" continued Mr. Redmond.
"About six months."
"Six months! And what was he doing there all that time? Any little entanglement—eh?" rather anxiously.
"I cannot tell you."
"Ah!—I see that you know more about Gilbert than you will admit!" exclaimed Miss Calderwood with a sharp accusing glance. "I believe girls in India are odious creatures. I have no doubt he got into some scrape out there." Helen blushed scarlet. "Yes," with an unpleasant little laugh, "your face tells tales. I suppose he was drawn into some silly flirtation—men are such fools! Well, it is very good of you to keep his secret; it's more than others would have done!" and with this insolent hint and a patronizing nod the heiress walked on.
Helen felt almost breathless with anger. "She had the passions of her kind;" her eyes sparkled, her nostrils quivered as she gazed after her receding rival. What had she done that she should be insulted and flouted by this supercilious heiress?
"Scrape!—stuff! Flirtation!—rubbish! It's all jealousy, every bit of it!" cried Mr. Redmond, as he removed his hat and cautiously passed his bandana across his forehead. "Gilbert is not a ladies' man—I only wish he was! And so you knew him very well? Eh, what?"
"As well as most people," turning away to break off a bit of syringa.
"Well, now let me hear all about him," very eagerly. "He hardly ever writes, and when he does there's nothing in his letters. Come, now, what did he do? How did he pass his time?"
"I really cannot tell you much—he lived a long way off on the mainland. I believe he spent his days in fishing and sailing. He liked the Andamans because they were a lazy, out-of-the-world region."
"I hope to goodness he liked them for nothing else. Eh, what? Six months' sailing and fishing was the deuce of a time, you know! You don't—just between you and me, you know—you don't think he had any other attraction? Eh, what—what?"
"Honestly, I don't believe he cared a straw for any one in the place," raising her eyes gravely to his, and speaking with unusual emphasis.
"Oh, well, I fancy you would be likely to know," rejoined the old gentleman innocently. "We must have some nice long talks about Gilbert; but just now I'm afraid we will have to go back to the tennis-ground; I want to have a chat with old Mrs. Morony. I need not tell you I'd much rather stay here walking about with you," he added gallantly. "But I must not be too selfish; and I'll give the young fellows a chance!"
So Helen was at last released from this purgatorial tête-à-tête, and permitted to join the rest of the company.
When she took leave of Miss Calderwood (which I must say she did very stiffly), she read more than a mere contemptuous dismissal in that lady's eyes; she saw suspicion, ay, and dislike, lurking in those shallow grey orbs; but Mr. Redmond wrung her hand affectionately at parting and said in his heartiest manner,—
"And to think of your knowing Gilbert! Eh, what? Well, I have dozens of questions to ask you about him; I shall be over to-morrow or next day."
"Poor Helen, I pitied you," said Katie as they walked home. "It was too bad of Mr. Redmond to carry you off."
"Il faut souffrir pour être belle," added Dido, with a laugh. "What a dose you must have had of 'my nephew!—my nephew'!"
As far as the Misses Sheridan were concerned "the chape entertainment" had been a prodigious success. They had enjoyed themselves immensely; had played tennis, sipped tea, and strolled about the grounds under military escort. Katie's tongue as she tripped along went like the clapper of the proverbial mill; but Helen was preoccupied and unusually silent. To return viâ dillon's Gate at the hour of seven p.m. was a feat quite beyond the Misses Sheridan's courage, and in spite of their cousin's protestations and remonstrances they insisted on going round by the road and entered Crowmore by the old avenue. As they turned a corner they noticed Sally's portly figure speeding towards the Castle with somewhat guilty haste, and a man approaching in their direction with his hands in his pockets and a straw in his mouth. To Helen's amazement it was Larry Flood.
"More power, ladies," was his brief but novel greeting.
"A fine evening, Larry," returned Dido. "So you have been walking with Sally?"
"'Tis only wance in a way, your ladyship."
"Is Biddy still against it?"
"She's that much again it, that if I wor to go next or near the house she'd just pick mee eyes out! Maybe you'll put in a word for me, Miss?"
"I don't see why Sally should not please herself. She's old enough."
"Well, for that matter we are both of us pretty long in the tooth! But I'll have her before the priest in spite of the old wan yet, though she is trying to draw down a match with Darby Chute!"
"Oh, that would never do!" exclaimed Helen with involuntary emphasis.
"I'm entirely of your opinion, Miss," said Larry, turning towards her. "I see you're none the worse for that little tip off the car! An' you are looking just as beautiful as a harvest moon!"
"And how is Finnigan's mare?" she inquired, not to be outdone in politeness.
"Oh, faix!" scratching his head, "shure she nearly drowned herself and me about a month ago. Coming out of Terryscreen fair and aisy, we met a band of music all of a sudden on the bridge, and without the least provocation she just turned about and leapt over the parapet, car and all!"
"And did YOU go over, Larry?" asked Helen with benevolent solicitude.
"Troth, and I did not. I stayed on land. We had terrible work to get her out, though she swam like an otter, and there was no great harm done, barrin' to the shafts again; but the mails was soaking wet—just in a sort of pulp; and the postmaster was raging and spoke very bitter. The end of it was I had to get shut of the mare! A horse on the road is well enough; but when they show a taste for the water it's a different kind of driving is required. So I sold her to a canal boatman—and maybe she's aisy now. She'll be hard set to run away with the boat! Well, she was a fine traveller!" he concluded regretfully.
"And what have you now?"
"Only the blind brown, till the fair of Banagher. He's a hape of work in him yet, and there's no fear of him shying. Well, Miss Dido, I'll not be detaining you. You'll mind and put in a word for me with the ould 'fostooke,'—I mane Biddy Macgravy. Tell her I'm a warm man, and an honest man, and a dacent man. Sure all the world knows that! She's taking her pigs to the wrong market," he added significantly, as he abruptly touched his caubeen, and departed.
"Modesty, thy name is Larry Flood!" ejaculated Helen. "Every one know's he's an honest man, and a dacent man!"
"Well, yes, he is in his way," acquiesced Dido, "but HE knows who is the heiress of these parts, and that Sally is a splendid dairy woman, and has a fortune of forty pounds! not to speak of a second-hand gold watch!"