CHAPTER II

AN IRISH BALL

In the Assembly Rooms of the capital city of the Sister Island there was

a public Ball, to celebrate the return to Erin of a British hero of Irish

blood, after his victorious Indian campaign; a mighty struggle splendidly

ended; and truly could it be said that all Erin danced to meet him; but

this was the pick of the dancing, past dispute the pick of the supping.

Outside those halls the supping was done in Lazarus fashion, mainly

through an excessive straining of the organs of hearing and vision, which

imparted the readiness for more, declared by physicians to be the state

inducing to sound digestion. Some one spied the figure of the hero at the

window and was fed; some only to hear the tale chewed the cud of it; some

told of having seen him mount the steps; and sure it was that at an hour

of the night, no matter when, and never mind a drop or two of cloud, he

would come down them again, and have an Irish cheer to freshen his

pillow. For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too.

Farther away, over field and bogland, the whiskies did their excellent

ancient service of watering the dry and drying the damp, to the toast of

'Lord Larrian, God bless him! he's an honour to the old country!' and a

bit of a sigh to follow, hints of a story, and loud laughter, a drink, a

deeper sigh, settling into conversation upon the brave Lord Larrian's

deeds, and an Irish regiment he favoured--had no taste for the enemy

without the backing of his 'boys.' Not he. Why, he'd never march to

battle and they not handy; because when he struck he struck hard, he

said. And he has a wound on the right hip and two fingers off his left

hand; has bled for England, to show her what Irishmen are when they're

well treated.

The fine old warrior standing at the upper end of the long saloon, tall,

straight, grey-haired, martial in his aspect and decorations, was worthy

to be the flag-pole for enthusiasm. His large grey eyes lightened from

time to time as he ranged them over the floating couples, and dropped a

word of inquiry to his aide, Captain Sir Lukin Dunstane, a good model of

a cavalry officer, though somewhat a giant, equally happy with his chief

in passing the troops of animated ladies under review. He named as many

as were known to him. Reviewing women exquisitely attired for inspection,

all variously and charmingly smiling, is a relief after the monotonous

regiments of men. Ireland had done her best to present the hero of her

blood an agreeable change; and he too expressed a patriotic satisfaction

on hearing that the faces most admired by him were of the native isle. He

looked upon one that came whirling up to him on a young officer's arm and

swept off into the crowd of tops, for a considerable while before he put

his customary question. She was returning on the spin when he said,

'Who is she?'

Sir Lukin did not know. 'She 's a new bird; she nodded to my wife; I'll

ask.'

He manoeuvred a few steps cleverly to where his wife reposed. The

information he gathered for the behoof of his chief was, that the

handsome creature answered to the name of Miss Merion; Irish; aged

somewhere between eighteen and nineteen; a dear friend of his wife's, and

he ought to have remembered her; but she was a child when he saw her

last.

'Dan Merion died, I remember, about the day of my sailing for India,'

said the General. 'She may be his daughter.'

The bright cynosure rounded up to him in the web of the waltz, with her

dark eyes for Lady Dunstane, and vanished again among the twisting

columns.

He made his way, handsomely bumped by an apologetic pair, to Lady

Dunstane, beside whom a seat was vacated for him; and he trusted she had

not over-fatigued herself.

'Confess,' she replied, 'you are perishing to know more than Lukin has

been able to tell you. Let me hear that you admire her: it pleases me;

and you shall hear what will please you as much, I promise you, General.'

'I do. Who wouldn't?' said he frankly.

'She crossed the Channel expressly to dance here tonight at the public

Ball in honour of you.'

'Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank, and accepts it

humbly.'

'That is grandly spoken.'

'She makes everything in the room dust round a blazing jewel.'

'She makes a poet of a soldier. Well, that you may understand how pleased

I am, she is my dearest friend, though she is younger than I, as may be

seen; she is the only friend I have. I nursed her when she was an infant;

my father and Mr. Dan Merion were chums. We were parted by my marriage

and the voyage to India. We have not yet exchanged a syllable: she was

snapped up, of course, the moment she entered the room. I knew she would

be a taking girl: how lovely, I did not guess. You are right, she

extinguishes the others. She used to be the sprightliest of living

creatures, and to judge by her letters, that has not faded. She 's in the

market, General.'

Lord Larrian nodded to everything he heard, concluding with a mock

doleful shake of the head. 'My poorest subaltern!' he sighed, in the

theatrical but cordially melancholy style of green age viewing Cytherea's

market.

His poorest subaltern was richer than he in the wherewithal to bid for

such prizes.

'What is her name in addition to Merion?'

'Diana Antonia Merion. Tony to me, Diana to the world.'

'She lives over there?'

'In England, or anywhere; wherever she is taken in. She will live, I

hope, chiefly with me.'

'And honest Irish?'

'Oh, she's Irish.'

'Ah!' the General was Irish to the heels that night.

Before further could be said the fair object of the dialogue came darting

on a trip of little runs, both hands out, all her face one tender sparkle

of a smile; and her cry proved the quality of her blood: 'Emmy! Emmy! my

heart!'

'My dear Tony!

I should not have come but for the hope of seeing you here.'

Lord Larrian rose and received a hurried acknowledgement of his courtesy

from the usurper of his place.

'Emmy! we might kiss and hug; we're in Ireland. I burn to! But you're not

still ill, dear? Say no! That Indian fever must have gone. You do look a

dash pale, my own; you're tired.'

'One dance has tired me. Why were you so late?'

'To give the others a chance? To produce a greater impression by

suspense? No and no. I wrote you I was with the Pettigrews. We caught the

coach, we caught the boat, we were only two hours late for the Ball; so

we did wonders. And good Mrs. Pettigrew is, pining somewhere to complete

her adornment. I was in the crush, spying for Emmy, when Mr. Mayor

informed me it was the duty of every Irishwoman to dance her toes off, if

she 'd be known for what she is. And twirl! a man had me by the waist,

and I dying to find you.'

'Who was the man?'

'Not to save these limbs from the lighted stake could I tell you!'

'You are to perform a ceremonious bow to Lord Larrian.'

'Chatter first! a little!'

The plea for chatter was disregarded. It was visible that the hero of the

night hung listening and in expectation. He and the Beauty were named to

one another, and they chatted through a quadrille. Sir Lukin introduced a

fellow-Harrovian of old days, Mr. Thomas Redworth, to his wife.

'Our weather-prophet, meteorologist,' he remarked, to set them going;

'you remember, in India, my pointing to you his name in a

newspaper--letter on the subject. He was generally safe for the

cricketing days.'

Lady Dunstane kindly appeared to call it to mind, and she led upon the

them-queried at times by an abrupt 'Eh?' and 'I beg pardon,' for

manifestly his gaze and one of his ears, if not the pair, were given to

the young lady discoursing with Lord Larrian. Beauty is rare; luckily is

it rare, or, judging from its effect on men, and the very stoutest of

them, our world would be internally more distracted planet than we see,

to the perversion of business, courtesy, rights of property, and the

rest. She perceived an incipient victim, of the hundreds she anticipated,

and she very tolerantly talked on: 'The weather and women have some

resemblance they say. Is it true that he who reads the one can read the

other?'

Lord Larrian here burst into a brave old laugh, exclaiming, 'Oh! good!'

Mr. Redworth knitted his thick brows. 'I beg pardon? Ah! women! Weather

and women? No; the one point more variable in women makes all the

difference.'

'Can you tell me what the General laughed at?'

The honest Englishman entered the trap with promptitude. 'She said:--who

is she, may I ask you?'

Lady Dunstane mentioned her name.

Daughter of the famous Dan Merion? The young lady merited examination for

her father's sake. But when reminded of her laughter-moving speech, Mr.

Redworth bungled it; he owned he spoilt it, and candidly stated his

inability to see the fun. 'She said, St. George's Channel in a gale ought

to be called St. Patrick's--something--I missed some point. That

quadrille-tune, the Pastourelle, or something . . .'

'She had experience of the Channel last night,' Lady Dunstane pursued,

and they both, while in seeming converse, caught snatches from their

neighbours, during a pause of the dance.

The sparkling Diana said to Lord Larrian, 'You really decline to make any

of us proud women by dancing to-night?'

The General answered: 'I might do it on two stilts; I can't on one.' He

touched his veteran leg.

'But surely,' said she, 'there's always an inspiration coming to it from

its partner in motion, if one of them takes the step.'

He signified a woeful negative. 'My dear young lady, you say dark things

to grey hairs!'

She rejoined: 'If we were over in England, and you fixed on me the stigma

of saying dark things, I should never speak without being thought

obscure.'

'It's because you flash too brightly for them.'

'I think it is rather the reminiscence of the tooth that received a stone

when it expected candy.'

Again the General laughed; he looked pleased and warmed. 'Yes, that 's

their way, that 's their way!' and he repeated her words to himself,

diminishing their importance as he stamped them on his memory, but so

heartily admiring the lovely speaker, that he considered her wit an

honour to the old country, and told her so. Irish prevailed up to

boiling-point.

Lady Dunstane, not less gratified, glanced up at Mr. Redworth, whose

brows bore the knot of perplexity over a strong stare. He, too, stamped

the words on his memory, to see subsequently whether they had a vestige

of meaning. Terrifically precocious, he thought her. Lady Dunstane, in

her quick sympathy with her friend, read the adverse mind in his face.

And her reading of the mind was right, wrong altogether her deduction of

the corresponding sentiment.

Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers.

They beheld a quaint spectacle: a gentleman, obviously an Englishman,

approached, with the evident intention of reminding the Beauty of the

night of her engagement to him, and claiming her, as it were, in the

lion's jaws. He advanced a foot, withdrew it, advanced, withdrew; eager

for his prize, not over-enterprising; in awe of the illustrious General

she entertained--presumeably quite unaware of the pretender's presence;

whereupon a voice was heard: 'Oh! if it was minuetting you meant before

the lady, I'd never have disputed your right to perform, sir.' For it

seemed that there were two claimants in the field, an Irishman and an

Englishman; and the former, having a livelier sense of the situation,

hung aloof in waiting for her eye; the latter directed himself to strike

bluntly at his prey; and he continued minuetting, now rapidly blinking,

flushed, angry, conscious of awkwardness and a tangle, incapable of

extrication. He began to blink horribly under the raillery of his rival.

The General observed him, but as an object remote and minute, a fly or

gnat. The face of the brilliant Diana was entirely devoted to him she

amused.

Lady Dunstane had the faint lines of a decorous laugh on her lips, as she

said: 'How odd it is that our men show to such disadvantage in a

Ball-room. I have seen them in danger, and there they shine first of any,

and one is proud of them. They should always be facing the elements or in

action.' She glanced at the minuet, which had become a petrified figure,

still palpitating, bent forward, an interrogative reminder.

Mr. Redworth reserved his assent to the proclamation of any English

disadvantage. A whiff of Celtic hostility in the atmosphere put him on

his mettle. 'Wherever the man is tried,' he said.

'My lady!' the Irish gentleman bowed to Lady Dunstane. 'I had the honour

. . . Sullivan Smith . . . at the castle . . .'

She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell

her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention

between the English gentleman and himself, as to the possession of the

loveliest of partners for this particular ensuing dance, and that they

had simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their

cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly

founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his

acquaintance with her eminent defunct father--one of the ever-radiating

stars of his quenchless country.

Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when

the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of

his imaginative logic.

'There will be dancing enough after supper,' she said.

'If I could score one dance with her, I'd go home supperless and

feasted,' said he. 'And that's not saying much among the hordes of hungry

troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet. See, my lady, the

gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up

to da capo. Oh! but it's a sheep trying to be wolf; he 's sheep-eyed and

he 's wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous! Oh, now! who'd believe

it!--the man has dared . . . I'd as soon think of committing sacrilege in

a cathedral!'

The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, 'breaching the

fortress,' and pointing out to Diana Merion 'her name on his dirty scrap

of paper': a shocking sight when the lady's recollection was the sole

point to be aimed at, and the only umpire. 'As if all of us couldn't have

written that, and hadn't done it!' Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned disgusted.

He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving ladies; and the bad

manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the race; individual members

of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing, honouring. So the man

blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man. But his

hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a

fellow-countryman. His own were of the antecedent century, therefore

venerable.

Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows at

her friend. Lady Dunstane motioned her fan, and Diana came, bending head.

'Are you bound in honour?'

'I don't think I am. And I do want to go on talking with the General. He

is so delightful and modest--my dream of a true soldier!--telling me of

his last big battle, bit by bit, to my fishing.'

'Put off this person for a square dance down the list, and take out Mr.

Redworth--Miss Diana Merlon, Mr. Redworth: he will bring you back to the

General, who must not totally absorb you, or he will forfeit his

popularity.'

Diana instantly struck a treaty with the pertinacious advocate of his

claims, to whom, on his relinquishing her, Mr. Sullivan Smith remarked:

'Oh! sir, the law of it, where a lady's concerned! You're one for

evictions, I should guess, and the anti-human process. It's that letter

of the law that stands between you and me and mine and yours. But you've

got your congee, and my blessing on ye!'

'It was a positive engagement,' said the enemy.

Mr. Sullivan Smith derided him. 'And a pretty partner you've pickled for

yourself when she keeps her positive engagement!'

He besought Lady Dunstane to console him with a turn. She pleaded

weariness. He proposed to sit beside her and divert her. She smiled, but

warned him that she was English in every vein. He interjected: 'Irish men

and English women! though it's putting the cart before the horse--the

copper pennies where the gold guineas should be. So here's the gentleman

who takes the oyster, like the lawyer of the fable. English is he? But we

read, the last shall be first. And English women and Irish men make the

finest coupling in the universe.'

'Well, you must submit to see an Irish woman led out by an English man,'

said Lady Dunstane, at the same time informing the obedient Diana, then

bestowing her hand on Mr. Redworth to please her friend, that he was a

schoolfellow of her husband's.

'Favour can't help coming by rotation, except in very extraordinary

circumstances, and he was ahead of me with you, and takes my due, and

'twould be hard on me if I weren't thoroughly indemnified.' Mr. Sullivan

Smith bowed. 'You gave them just the start over the frozen minute for

conversation; they were total strangers, and he doesn't appear a bad sort

of fellow for a temporary mate, though he's not perfectly sure of his

legs. And that we'll excuse to any man leading out such a fresh young

beauty of a Bright Eyes--like the stars of a winter's night in the frosty

season over Columkill, or where you will, so that's in Ireland, to be

sure of the likeness to her.'

'Her mother was half English.'

'Of course she was. And what was my observation about the coupling? Dan

Merion would make her Irish all over. And she has a vein of Spanish blood

in her; for he had; and she's got the colour.--But you spoke of their

coupling--or I did. Oh, a man can hold his own with an English roly-poly

mate: he's not stifled! But a woman hasn't his power of resistance to

dead weight. She's volatile, she's frivolous, a rattler and

gabbler--haven't I heard what they say of Irish girls over there? She

marries, and it's the end of her sparkling. She must choose at home for a

perfect harmonious partner.'

Lady Dunstane expressed her opinion that her couple danced excellently

together.

'It'd be a bitter thing to see, if the fellow couldn't dance, after

leading her out!' sighed Mr. Sullivan Smith. 'I heard of her over there.

They, call her the Black Pearl, and the Irish Lily--because she's dark.

They rack their poor brains to get the laugh of us.'

'And I listen to you,' said Lady Dunstane.

'Ah! if all England, half, a quarter, the smallest piece of the land were

like you, my lady, I'd be loyal to the finger-nails. Now, is she

engaged?--when I get a word with her?'

'She is nineteen, or nearly, and she ought to have five good years of

freedom, I think.'

'And five good years of serfdom I'd serve to win her!'

A look at him under the eyelids assured Lady Dunstane that there would be

small chance for Mr. Sullivan Smith; after a life of bondage, if she knew

her Diana, in spite of his tongue, his tact, his lively features, and

breadth of shoulders.

Up he sprang. Diana was on Mr. Redworth's arm. 'No refreshments,' she

said; and 'this is my refreshment,' taking the seat of Mr. Sullivan

Smith, who ejaculated,

'I must go and have that gentleman's name.' He wanted a foe.

'You know you are ready to coquette with the General at any moment,

Tony,' said her friend.

'Yes, with the General!'

'He is a noble old man.'

'Superb. And don't say "old man." With his uniform and his height and his

grey head, he is like a glorious October day just before the brown leaves

fall.'

Diana hummed a little of the air of Planxty Kelly, the favourite of her

childhood, as Lady Dunstane well remembered, they smiled together at the

scenes and times it recalled.

'Do you still write verses, Tony?'

'I could about him. At one part of the fight he thought he would be

beaten. He was overmatched in artillery, and it was a cavalry charge he

thundered on them, riding across the field to give the word of command to

the couple of regiments, riddled to threads, that gained the day. That is

life--when we dare death to live! I wonder at men, who are men, being

anything but soldiers! I told you, madre, my own Emmy, I forgave you for

marrying, because it was a soldier.'

'Perhaps a soldier is to be the happy man. But you have not told me a

word of yourself. What has been done with the old Crossways?'

'The house, you know, is mine. And it's all I have: ten acres and the

house, furnished, and let for less than two hundred a year. Oh! how I

long to evict the tenants! They can't have my feeling for the place where

I was born. They're people of tolerably good connections, middling

wealthy, I suppose, of the name of Warwick, and, as far as I can

understand, they stick there to be near the Sussex Downs, for a nephew,

who likes to ride on them. I've a half engagement, barely legible, to

visit them on an indefinite day, and can't bear the idea of strangers

masters in the old house. I must be driven there for shelter, for a roof,

some month. And I could make a pilgrimage in rain or snow just to doat on

the outside of it. That's your Tony.'

'She's my darling.'

'I hear myself speak! But your voice or mine, madre, it's one soul. Be

sure I am giving up the ghost when I cease to be one soul with you, dear

and dearest! No secrets, never a shadow of a deception, or else I shall

feel I am not fit to live. Was I a bad correspondent when you were in

India?'

'Pretty well. Copious letters when you did write.'

'I was shy. I knew I should be writing, to Emmy and another, and only

when I came to the flow could I forget him. He is very finely built; and

I dare say he has a head. I read of his deeds in India and quivered. But

he was just a bit in the way. Men are the barriers to perfect

naturalness, at least, with girls, I think. You wrote to me in the same

tone as ever, and at first I had a struggle to reply. And I, who have

such pride in being always myself!'

Two staring semi-circles had formed, one to front the Hero; the other the

Beauty. These half moons imperceptibly dissolved to replenish, and became

a fixed obstruction.

'Yes, they look,' Diana made answer to Lady Dunstane's comment on the

curious impertinence. She was getting used to it, and her friend had a

gratification in seeing how little this affected her perfect naturalness.

'You are often in the world--dinners, dances?' she said.

'People are kind.'

'Any proposals?'

'Nibbles.'

'Quite heart-free?'

'Absolutely.'

Diana's unshadowed bright face defied all menace of an eclipse.

The block of sturdy gazers began to melt. The General had dispersed his

group of satellites by a movement with the Mayoress on his arm, construed

as the signal for procession to the supper-table.