CHAPTER IX.
_The Chatelaine of Castle Dacre_
HOW is your Grace's horse, Sans-pareil?' asked Sir Chetwode Chetwodeof Chetwode of the Duke of St. James, shooting at the same time a slyglance at his opposite neighbour, Sir Tichborne Tichborne of Tichborne.
'Quite well, sir,' said the Duke in his quietest tone, but with an airwhich, he flattered himself, might repress further inquiry.
'Has he got over his fatigue?' pursued the dogged Baronet, with a short,gritty laugh, that sounded like a loose drag-chain dangling against thestones. 'We all thought the Yorkshire air would not agree with him.'
'Yet, Sir Chetwode, that could hardly be your opinion of Sanspareil,'said Miss Dacre, 'for I think, if I remember right, I had the pleasureof making you encourage our glove manufactory.'
Sir Chetwode looked a little confused. The Duke of St. James, inspiritedby his fair ally, rallied, and hoped Sir Chetwode did not back his steedto a fatal extent. 'If,' continued he, 'I had had the slightest ideathat any friend of Miss Dacre was indulging in such an indiscretion, Icertainly would have interfered, and have let him known that the horsewas not to win.'
'Is that a fact?' asked Sir Tichborne Tichborne of Tichborne, with asturdy voice.
'Can a Yorkshireman doubt it?' rejoined the Duke. 'Was it possible foranyone but a mere Newmarket dandy to have entertained for a moment thesupposition that anyone but May Dacre should be the Queen of the St.Leger?'
'I have heard something of this before,' said Sir Tichborne, 'but I didnot believe it. A young friend of mine consulted me upon the subject."Would you advise me," said he, "to settle?" "Why," said I, "if youcan prove any bubble, my opinion is, don't; but if you cannot proveanything, my opinion is, do."'
'Very just! very true!' were murmured by many in the neighbourhood ofthe oracle; by no one with more personal sincerity than Lady Tichborneherself.
'I will write to my young friend,' continued the Baronet.
'Oh, no!' said Miss Dacre. 'His Grace's candour must not be abused. Ihave no idea of being robbed of my well-earned honours. Sir Tichborne,private conversation must be respected, and the sanctity of domesticlife must not be profaned. If the tactics of Doncaster are no longer tobe fair war, why, half the families in the Riding will be ruined!'
'Still,'--said Sir Tichborne.
But Mr. Dacre, like a deity in a Trojan battle, interposed, and askedhis opinion of a keeper.
'I hope you are a sportsman,' said Miss Dacre to the Duke, 'for this isthe palace of Nimrod!'
'I have hunted; it was not very disagreeable. I sometimes shoot; it isnot very stupid.'
'Then, in fact, I perceive that you are a heretic. Lord Faulconcourt,his Grace is moralising on the barbarity of the chase.'
'Then he has never had the pleasure of hunting in company with MissDacre.'
'Do you indeed follow the hounds?' asked the Duke.
'Sometimes do worse, ride over them; but Lord Faulconcourt is fastemancipating me from the trammels of my frippery foreign education,and I have no doubt that, in another season, I shall fling off quite instyle.'
'You remember Mr. Annesley?' asked the Duke.
'It is difficult to forget him. He always seemed to me to think that theworld was made on purpose for him to have the pleasure of "cutting" it.'
'Yet he was your admirer!'
'Yes, and once paid me a compliment. He told me it was the only one thathe had ever uttered.'
'Oh, Charley, Charley! this is excellent. We shall have a tale when wemeet. What was the compliment?'
'It would be affectation in me to pretend that I have forgotten it.Nevertheless, you must excuse me.'
'Pray, pray let me have it!'
'Perhaps you will not like it?'
'Now, I must hear it.'
'Well then, he said that talking to me was the only thing that consoledhim for having to dine with you and to dance with Lady Shropshire.'
'Charles is jealous,' drawled the Duke.
'Of her Grace?' asked Miss Dacre, with much anxiety.
'No; but Charles is aged, and once, when he dined with me, was taken formy uncle.'
The ladies retired, and the gentlemen sat barbarously long. Sir ChetwodeChetwode of Chetwode and Sir Tichborne Tichborne of Tichborne were twomen who drank wine independent of fashion, and exacted, to the lastglass, the identical quantity which their fathers had drunk half acentury before, and to which they had been used almost from theircradle. The only subject of conversation was sporting. Terrible shots,more terrible runs, neat barrels, and pretty fencers. The Duke of St.James was not sufficiently acquainted with the geography of the mansionto make a premature retreat, an operation which is looked upon with anevil eye, and which, to be successful, must be prompt and decisive,and executed with supercilious nonchalance. So he consoled himself bya little chat with Lord Mildmay, who sat smiling, handsome, andmustachioed, with an empty glass, and who was as much out of water as hewas out of wine. The Duke was not very learned in Parisian society; butstill, with the aid of the Duchess de Berri and the Duchess de Duras,Leontine Fay, and Lady Stuart de Rothesay, they got on, and made out thetime until Purgatory ceased and Paradise opened.
For Paradise it was, although there were there assembled some thirty orforty persons not less dull than the majority of our dull race, and inthose little tactics that make society less burdensome perhaps even lessaccomplished. But a sunbeam will make even the cloudiest day break intosmiles; a bounding fawn will banish monotony even from a wilderness; anda glass of claret, or perchance some stronger grape, will convert eventhe platitude of a goblet of water into a pleasing beverage, and so MayDacre moved among her guests, shedding light, life, and pleasure.
She was not one who, shrouded in herself, leaves it to chance or fateto amuse the beings whom she has herself assembled within her halls.Nonchalance is the _metier_ of your modern hostess; and so long asthe house be not on fire, or the furniture not kicked, you may beeven ignorant who is the priestess of the hospitable fane in which youworship.
They are right; men shrink from a fussy woman. And few can aspire toregulate the destinies of their species, even in so slight a point as anhour's amusement, without rare powers. There is no greater sin than tobe _trop prononcee_. A want of tact is worse than a want of virtue.Some women, it is said, work on pretty well against the tide without thelast: I never knew one who did not sink who ever dared to sail withoutthe first.
Loud when they should be low, quoting the wrong person, talking onthe wrong subject, teasing with notice, excruciating with attentions,disturbing a tete-a-tete in order to make up a dance; wasting eloquencein persuading a man to participate in amusement whose reputation dependson his social sullenness; exacting homage with a restless eye, andnot permitting the least worthy knot to be untwined without theirdivinityships' interference; patronising the meek, anticipating theslow, intoxicated with compliment, plastering with praise, that you inreturn may gild with flattery; in short, energetic without elegance,active without grace, and loquacious without wit; mistaking bustlefor style, raillery for badinage, and noise for gaiety, these are thecharacters who mar the very career they think they are creating, and whoexercise a fatal influence on the destinies of all those who have themisfortune to be connected with them.
Not one of these was she, the lady of our tale. There was a quietdignity lurking even under her easiest words and actions which made youfeel her notice a compliment: there was a fascination in her calm smileand in her sunlit eye which made her invitation to amusement itselfa pleasure. If you refused, you were not pressed, but left to thatisolation which you appeared to admire; if you assented, you wererewarded with a word which made you feel how sweet was such society!Her invention never flagged, her gaiety never ceased; yet both werespontaneous, and often were unobserved. All felt amused, and all wereunconsciously her agents. Her word and her example seemed, each instant,to call forth from her companions new accomplishments, new graces, newsources of joy and of delight. All were surprised that they were soagreeab
le.
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