CHAPTER XII

ONE TOO MANY

At breakfast, for an old soldier, the General showed considerable want of military skill. Miss Douglas, indeed, assumed an admirable position of defence, flanked by Norah Macormac on one side, and the corner of the table on the other; but her admirer, posting himself exactly opposite, never took his eyes off her face, handed her everything he could reach, and made himself foolishly conspicuous in paying her those attentions to which ladies do not object so much as they profess. Like many other players, he lost his head when risking a large stake.

Had he cared less, he would have remembered that wisest of all maxims in dealing with others--"_Il faut se faire valoir_," and she might have appreciated his good qualities all the more, to mark the esteem in which he was held by her own sex. The General could fix a woman's attention, could even excite her interest, when he chose; and many of these laughing dames would have asked no better cavalier for the approaching races than this handsome, war-worn veteran, who "made such a fool of himself about that tall girl with black hair!"

Breakfast in a country house is usually a protracted and elastic meal. The "jackeens," whose habits were tolerably active, came down in good time, but the London young gentlemen dropped in, one later than another, gorgeously apparelled, cool, composed, hungry, obviously proud of being up and dressed at eleven o'clock, A.M.

Miss Norah whispered to Satanella that "she didn't like dandies, and dandies didn't like _her_!"

Looking in the girl's bright, handsome face, the latter proposition seemed to Miss Douglas wholly untenable.

"What sort of people _do_ you like, dear?" said she, in answer to the former.

"The army," replied Miss Norah, with great animation. "And the cavalry, ye know--they're beautiful; but a man must have something besides a fine uniform to please _me_."

"What more _can_ you want?" asked Blanche, with a smile.

"Well, a good seat on his horse, now," laughed the other, "that's the first thing, surely, and a good temper, and a good nerve, and a pleasant smile in his face, when everything goes wrong."

"You're thinking of somebody in particular," said Blanche.

"I am," answered Miss Norah boldly, though with a rising blush. "I'm thinking of somebody I should wish my brothers to be like--that I should wish to be like myself. He's never puzzled; he's never put out. Let the worst happen that will, he knows what to do, and how to do it--a fair face, a brave spirit, and a kind heart!"

She raised her voice, for the subject seemed to interest her deeply. Some of the guests looked up from their breakfasts, and the General listened with a smile.

"It sounds charming," remarked Miss Douglas. "A hero--a paladin, and a very nice person into the bargain. I should like immensely to see him."

"Would ye now?" said the Irish girl. "And so ye shall, dear. He'll be at the races to-morrow. Ye'll see him ride. I'll engage he'll come to the Ladies' Stand. Say the word, and I'll introduce him to ye myself."

"Is he an Irishman?" asked Miss Douglas, amused with her animated manner and perfect good faith.

"An Irishman!" exclaimed Norah. "Did ever ye hear of Walters for an Irishman's name? They call him Daisy that know him best, though mamma says I am never to mention him, only as Captain Walters."

The shot was quite unexpected, but Blanche knew the General's eye was on her, and she neither started nor winced. Scarcely even changed countenance, except that she turned a shade paler, and looked sternly in her admirer's face while he carried on the conversation.

"Not Captain Walters _yet_, Miss Macormac," said the old soldier stiffly. "First for a troop though, and one going immediately. I know him very well, but never heard so flattering an account of him before. What a thing it is to have a charming young lady for a partisan! _We_ think him a good-humoured rattle enough, and he can ride, to do him justice, but surely--eh?--there's not much _in_ him. Miss Douglas here sees him oftener than I do, what does _she_ say?"

"A pleasant companion, quite as clever as other people, and a right good fellow!" burst out Blanche, her dark eyes flashing defiance. "That's what _she_ says, General! And what's more, she always stands up for her friends, and _hates_ people who abuse them!"

The General, though he opened his mouth, was stricken dumb. Norah Macormac clapped her hands, and Mrs. Lushington, looking calmly down the table, afforded the discomfited soldier a sweet and reassuring smile.

Lady Mary, reviewing her guests from behind an enormous tea-urn, judged the moment had arrived for a general move, and rose accordingly. As, late in the autumn, coveys get up all over the ground when you flush a single bird, so the whole party followed her example, and made for the door, which was opened by St. Josephs, who sought in vain a responsive glance from Miss Douglas while she passed out, with her head up, and, a sure sign she was offended, more swing than usual in the skirts of her dress. He consoled himself by resolving that, if the weather cleared, he would ask her to take a walk, and so make friends before luncheon.

Gleams of sunshine sucking up a mist that hung about the hills above the park, disclosing like islands on a lake, clumps of trees, and patches of verdure, in the valley below, glittering on the surface of a wide and shallow river that circled and broke, over its rocky bed, in ripples of molten gold, would have seemed favourable to his project, but that the fine weather which might enable him to walk abroad with his ladye-love, was welcomed by his host for the promotion of a hundred schemes of amusement to while away a non-hunting day after the shooting season had closed.

"It's fairing fast enough," exclaimed the cheerful old man. "We call that a bright sky in Ireland, and why not? Annyhow it's a great light to shoot a match at the pigeons; and if ye'd like to wet a line in the Dabble there, I'll engage ye'll raise a ten-pound fish before ye'd say 'Paddy Snap.'"

"I'll go bail ye will!" assented a Mr. Murphy, called by his familiars, "Mick," who made a point of agreeing with his host. "I seen them rising yesterday afternoon as thick as payse, an' me riding by without so much as a lash-whip in me hand."

Two of the party, confirmed anglers, proposed to start forthwith.

"There's a colt by Lord George I'd like ye to look at, General," continued Macormac, who would have each amuse himself in his own way. "We're training him for the hunt next season, and a finer leaper wasn't bred in Kildare. D'ye see that sunk fence now parting the flower garden from the demesne? It's not two years old he was when he broke loose from the paddock, and dashed out over it like a wild deer. There's five-and-twenty feet, bank and ditch, ye can measure it for yourself!"

"Thirty! if there's wan!" assented Mr. Murphy. "An' him flyin' over it in his stride, an' niver laid an iron to the sod!"

The General, however, declined an inspection of this promising animal, on the plea that he was not much of a walker, and had letters to write.

"The post's gone out this hour and more," said his host. "But ye'd like to ride now. Of course ye would! See, Mick! Sullivan's harriers will be at the kennel as usual. Wait till I tell ye. Why, wouldn't the boys get a fallow deer off the old park, and we'll raise a hunt for ye in less than an hour?"

"I'll engage they can be laid on in twenty minutes from this time," declared Mick. "Say the word, an' I'll run round to the stable, and bid Larry saddle up every beast that can stand."

"The General might ride Whiteboy," said his host, pondering, "and Norah's got her own horse, and I'll try young Orville, and ye shall take the colt yerself, Mick. We'll get a hunt, annyways!"

Mr. Murphy looked as if he would have preferred an older, or as he termed it, "a more accomplished hunter;" but he never dreamed of disputing the master's word, and was leaving the room in haste to further all necessary arrangements, when St. Josephs stopped him on the threshold.

"You'll think me very slow," said he graciously. "But the truth is, I'm getting old and rheumatic, and altogether I feel hardly fit for the saddle to-day. Don't let me interfere with anybody's arrangements. I'll write my letters in the library, and then, perhaps, take a turn in the garden with the ladies."

Mick screwed up his droll Irish mouth into a meaning but inaudible whistle. Satisfied by the courtesy of his manner that the General was what he called "a real gentleman," it seemed impossible such a man could resist the temptations of a pigeon match, a salmon river, above all, an impromptu hunt, unless he had nobler game in view. Till the old soldier talked of "a turn in the garden with the ladies," Mr. Murphy told himself he was "bothered entirely," but now, failing any signs of disapproval on the master's face, felt he could agree, as was his custom, with the last speaker.

"Why wouldn't ye?" said he encouragingly. "An' finer pleasure gardens ye'll not see in Ireland than Macormac's. That's for cucumbers, anyhow! An' the ladies will be proud to take a turn with ye, one and all. Divil thank them, then, when they get a convoy to their likin'!"

So the General was allowed to follow his own devices, while his host arranged divers amusements for the other guests according to programme, with the exception of the deer hunt. By the time a fallow buck was secured the hounds had been fed, and, under any circumstances, Larry, the groom, reported so many lame horses in the stable, it would have been impossible to mount one-half of the party in a style befitting the occasion.

St. Josephs walked exultingly into the drawing-room, where he discovered Lady Mary alone, stitching a flannel petticoat for an old woman at the lodge. She thought he wanted the _Times_ newspaper, and pointed to it on a writing-table.

"Deserted, Lady Mary?" said this crafty hunter of dames, "even by your nearest and dearest. Left, like a good fairy, doing a work of benevolence in solitude."

"It is the--the skirt you mean?" replied her ladyship, holding up the garment in question without the slightest diffidence. "Sure, then, I'll get it hemmed and done with this afternoon. I'd have asked Norah to help me,--the child was always quick at her needle,--but she's off to show Miss Douglas the waterfall: those two by themselves. It's as much as they'll do to be back by luncheon; though my girl's a jewel of a walker, and the other's as straight as an arrow, and as graceful as a deer."

The General's letters became all at once of vital importance. Excusing himself with extreme politeness to Lady Mary, who kept working on at the petticoat, he hastened to the library, where he did not stay two minutes, but, gliding by a side door into the hall, got his hat, and emerged on the park, with a vague hope of finding some one who would direct him to the waterfall.

The two young ladies, meanwhile, were a good Irish mile from the castle, in an opposite direction. Norah, of course, knew a short cut through the woods, that added about a third to the distance. They walked a good pace, and exhilarated by the air, the scenery, and the sound of their own fresh young voices, skipped along the path, talking, laughing, even jeering each other, as though they had been friends from childhood.

Their conversation, as was natural, turned on the approaching races. To Norah Macormac, Punchestown constituted, perhaps, the chief gala of the year. For those two days, alas! so often rainy, she reserved her freshest gloves, her newest bonnet, her brightest glances and smiles. To the pleasure everybody experiences in witnessing the performances of a good horse, she added the feminine enjoyment of showing her own pretty self in all her native attractions, set off by dress. It was no wonder she should impart to her companion that she wouldn't give up the races even for a trip to Paris. She calculated their delights as equal to a whole month's hunting, and at least twenty balls.

Miss Douglas, too, anticipated no little excitement from the same source. Her trip across the Channel, with its concomitant discipline, a new country, wild scenery, the good humour and cordiality that surrounded her, above all, the prospect of seeing Daisy again, had raised her spirits far above their usual pitch. Her cheek glowed, her eye sparkled, her tongue ran on. She could hardly believe herself the same reserved and haughty dame who was wont to ride from Prince's Gate to Hyde Park Corner, and find nothing worthy to cost her a sigh or win from her a smile.

"Everybody in Ireland goes there, absentees and all," said laughing Norah. "It's such fun, you can't think, with the different turn-outs, from the Lord Lieutenant's half-dozen carriages-and-four to Mr. Murphy's outside car, with Mrs. Murphy and nine children packed all over it. She never goes anywhere else with him; but you shall see her to-morrow in all her glory. We like to be on the course early, it's so amusing to watch the arrivals, and then we get good places on the Stand."

"Can you see well from the Ladies' Stand?" asked Blanche eagerly. "I'm rather interested in one of the races. You'll think me very sporting. I've not exactly got a horse to run, but there's a mare called Satanella going to start, and I confess I want to see her win."

Norah bounded like a young roe. "Satanella!" she repeated. "Why, that's Daisy's mount! It is to win, dear? Oh! then, if she doesn't win, or come very near it, I'll be fit to cry my eyes out, and never ask to go to a race again."

Her colour rose, her voice deepened, both gait and accent denoted the sincerity of her good wishes; and Miss Douglas, without quite admitting she had just cause for offence, felt as a dog feels when another dog is sniffing round his dinner.

"I've no doubt the mare will have justice done to her," she said severely. "He's a beautiful rider."

"A beautiful rider, and a beautiful mare entirely!" exclaimed her impulsive companion. "Now to think he should be such a friend of yours, and me never to know it! I can't always make him out," added Miss Norah pondering. "Sometimes he'll speak up, and sometimes he'll keep things back. You'll wonder to hear me when I tell you I haven't so much as seen this mare they make such a talk about!"

"I have ridden her repeatedly," observed Miss Douglas, with a considerable accession of dignity. "In fact, she is more mine than his, and I had to give him leave before he ever sent her to be trained."

"Did ye, now?" replied the other, looking somewhat disconcerted. "And does he ride often with you in London--up and down the Park, as they call it? How I'd long for a gallop in a place like that, where they never go out of a walk!"

Blanche was obliged to admit that such rides, though proposed very frequently, came off but rarely, and Norah seemed in no way dissatisfied with this confession.

"When he's here, now," she said, "if there isn't a hunt to be got up, we gallop all over the country-side, him and me, the same as if we'd a fox and a pack of hounds before us. It's him that taught me the real right way to hold the bridle, and I never could manage papa's Orville horse till he showed me how. It's not likely I'd forget anything Daisy told me! Here we are at the waterfall. Come off the rock now, or ye'll not have a dry thread on ye in five minutes!"

Miss Douglas, keeping back a good deal of vexation, had the good sense to follow her guide's advice, and leaped lightly down amongst the shingle from the broad flat rock to which she had sprung, as affording a view of the cascade.

It was a fine sight, no doubt. Swelled by the spring rains, and increased by many little tributaries from the neighbouring hills, a considerable volume of water came tumbling over a ledge of bold bare rock, to roar and brawl and circle round a basin fifty feet below, not less than ten feet deep, from which it escaped in sheets of foam over certain shallows, till it was lost in a black narrow gorge, crowned by copses already budding and blooming with the first smiles of spring.

"We're mighty proud of the Dabble in these parts," observed Norah Macormac, when she had withdrawn her friend from the showers of spray that quivered in faint and changing rainbows under the sunshine. "There's not such a river for fish anywhere this side the Shannon. And where there's fish there's mostly fishers. See, now; Captain Walters killed one of nine pounds and a half in the bend by the dead stump there. He'd have lost him only for little Thady Brallaghan and me hurrying to fetch the gaff, and I held it while we landed the beast on the gravel below the rocks."

It was getting unbearable! Blanche had started in such good spirits, full of life and hope, enjoying the air, the scenery, the exercise; but with every word that fell from her companion's lips the landscape faded, the skies turned grey, the very turf beneath her feet seemed to have lost its elasticity. Norah Macormac could not but perceive the change; attributing it, however, to fatigue, and blaming herself severely for thus tempting a helpless London girl into an expedition beyond her strength,--anticipating, at the same time, her mother's displeasure for that which good Lady Mary would consider a breach of the laws of hospitality,--"Sure ye're tired," said she, offering to carry the other's parasol, which might have weighed a pound. "It's myself I blame, to have brought you such a walk as this, and you not used to it, may be, like us that live up here amongst the hills."

But Blanche clung to her parasol, and repudiated the notion of fatigue. "She had never enjoyed a walk so much. It was lovely scenery, and a magnificent waterfall. She had no idea there was anything so fine in Ireland. She would have gone twice the distance to see it. Tired! She wasn't a bit tired, and believed she might be quite as good a walker as Miss Macormac."

There were times when Miss Douglas felt her nickname not altogether undeserved. She became Satanella now to the core.

Luncheon was on the table when the young ladies got back to the castle, and although several of the guests had absented themselves, the General took his place with those who remained. St. Josephs was not in the best of humours, for a solitary walk in a strange district which had failed in its object. He sat, as it would seem, purposely a long way from Miss Douglas, and the servants were already clearing away before he tried to catch her eye. What he saw, or how he gathered from an instantaneous glance that his company was more welcome now than it had been at breakfast, is one of those mysteries on which it seems useless to speculate; but he never left her side again during the afternoon.

The General was true to his colours, and seldom ventured on the slightest act of disloyalty. When he returned, as in the present instance, to his allegiance, he always found himself under more authority than ever for his weak attempt at insubordination.