CHAPTER XV

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Dinner that day at the castle seemed less lively than usual. Macormac, indeed, whose joviality was invincible, ate, drank, laughed, and talked for a dozen; but Lady Mary's spirits were obviously depressed; and the guests, perhaps not without private vexation of their own, took their cue rather from hostess than host. An unaccountable sense of gloom and disappointment pervaded the whole party. The General having come down early, in hopes of a few minutes with Miss Douglas in the drawing-room before the others were dressed, had been disappointed by the protracted toilette and tardy appearance of that provoking young lady, with whom he parted an hour before on terms of mutual sympathy and tenderness, but who now sat pale and silent, while the thunder clouds he knew and dreaded gathered ominously on her brow. His preoccupation necessarily affected his neighbour--a budding beauty fresh from the school-room, full of fun and good humour, that her sense of propriety kept down, unless judiciously encouraged and drawn out. Most of the gentlemen had been wet to the skin, many had lost money, all were tired, and Norah Macormac's eyes filled every now and then with tears. These discoveries Mrs. Lushington imparted in a whisper to Lord St. Abbs as he sat between herself and her hostess, whom he had taken in to dinner, pausing thereafter to mark the effect of her condescension on this raw youth, lately launched into the great world. The young nobleman, however, betrayed no symptoms of emotion beyond screwing his eye-glass tighter in its place, and turning round to look straight in her face, while it dropped out with a jump. Even Mrs. Lushington felt at a disadvantage, and took counsel with her own heart whether she should accost him again.

Why Lord St. Abbs went about at all, or what pleasure he derived from the society of his fellow-creatures, was a puzzle nobody had yet been able to find out. Pale, thin, and puny in person, freckled, sandy-haired, bearing all outward characteristics of Scottish extraction, except the Caledonian's gaunt and stalwart frame, he neither rowed, shot, fished, sang, made jokes, nor played whist. He drank very little, conversed not at all, and was voted by nearly all who had the advantage of his acquaintance "the dullest young man out!"

Yet was he to be seen everywhere, from Buckingham Palace or Holland House to Hampton races and the fire-works at Cremorne; always alone, always silent, with his glass in his eye, observant, imperturbable, and thinking, no doubt, a great deal.

It was rumoured, indeed, that on one memorable occasion he got drunk at Cambridge, and kept a supper-party in roars of laughter till four, A.M. If so, he must have fired all his jokes off at once, so to speak, and blown the magazine up afterwards; for he never blazed forth in such lustre again. He came out a Wrangler of his year, notwithstanding, and the best modern linguist, as well as classical scholar, in the university. Though the world of ball-goers and diners-out ignores such distinctions, a strong political party, hungering for office, had its eye on him already. As his father voted for Government in the Upper House, a provident director of the Opposition lost no time in sounding him on his views, should he become a member of the Lower. How little, to use his own words, the _whip_ "took by his motion" may be gathered from the opinion he expressed in confidence to his chief, that "St. Abbs was either as close as wax or the biggest fool (and it's saying a great deal) who ever came out of Cambridge with a degree!"

Gloomy as a dinner-party may appear at first, if the champagne circulates freely, people begin to talk long before the repast is half over. What must children think of their seniors when the dining-room door opens for an instant, and trailing upstairs unwillingly to bed, they linger to catch that discordant unintelligible gabble going on within? During a lull Mrs. Lushington made one more effort to arouse the attention of Lord St. Abbs.

"We're all getting better by degrees," said she, with a comic little sigh. "But it has been a disastrous day, and I believe everybody feels just as I do myself."

"How?" demanded his lordship, while the eye-glass bounced into his plate.

"Like the man who won a shilling and lost eighteen-pence," she answered, laughing.

"Why?" he asked, yet more austerely, screwing the instrument into position the while with a defiant scowl.

She was out of patience--no wonder.

"Good gracious, Lord St. Abbs!" said she. "Haven't we all been on the wrong horse? Haven't we all been backing Daisy?"

She spoke rather loud, and was amused to observe the effect of her observation. It was like dropping a squib in a boy's school during lessons. Everybody must needs join in the excitement.

"A bad job indeed!" said one.

"A great race entirely!" added another. "Run fairly out from end to end, and only a neck between first and second at the finish!"

"I wish I'd taken old Sullivan's advice," moaned a third; "or backed the mare for a place, annyhow."

"Ye might have been wrong even then, me boy," interrupted a jolly, red-faced gentleman, "unless ye squared the ould woman! I wonder would she take three half-crowns a day to come with me twice a year to the Curragh?"

"I knew of the mare's trial," drawled one of the London dandies, "and backed her to win me a monkey. Daisy put me on at once, like a trump. It was a real good thing and it has boiled over. (Champagne, please.) Such is life, Miss Douglas. We have no hope of getting home now till Epsom Spring."

Miss Douglas, not the least to his discomfiture, stared him scornfully in the face without reply.

"I'm afraid it's a severe blow to young Walters," observed the General. "They tell me he has lost a good deal more than he can afford."

"Got it, I fancy, very hot!" said the dandy. "Gad, he rode as if he'd backed his mount. I thought his finish one of the best I ever saw."

Norah Macormac threw him the sweetest of glances, and wondered why she had considered him so very uninteresting till now.

"They say he hasn't a shilling left," continued the General, but stopped short when he caught the flash of Satanella's eye, under its dark, frowning brow.

"I dare say he'll pull through," said she bitterly, "and disappoint his dearest friends, after all."

"I'll engage he will, Miss Douglas!" exclaimed Macormac's hearty voice from the end of the table. "It's yourself wouldn't turn your back on a friend, lose or win. Take a glass of that claret, now. It'll not hurt ye. Here's the boy's health, and good luck to him! A pleasanter fellow, to my mind, never emptied a bottle, and a better rider never sat in a saddle, than he's proved himself this day!"

Norah would have liked to jump up and hug papa's handsome white head in her embrace on the spot, but Lady Mary had been watching the girl to-night with a mother's anxiety, and fearful lest her daughter should betray herself if subjected to further trial, gave the signal rather prematurely for the ladies to withdraw.

While they trooped gracefully out, the gentlemen were still discussing Daisy's defeat, and the catastrophe of the Great United Service Handicap.

Everybody knows what men talk about when left alone after dinner; but none, at least of the rougher sex, can venture to guess the topics with which ladies beguile their seclusion in the drawing-room. Whatever these might be, it seems they had little interest for Mrs. Lushington, whose habit it was to retire for ten minutes or so to her own chamber, there, perhaps, to revise and refresh her charms ere she descended once more upon a world of victims.

Her bedroom was gorgeously furnished, supplied with all the luxuries to which she was accustomed; but the windows did not shut close, and a draught beneath the door lifted the hearth-rug at her fire-place; therefore she made but a short stay in her apartment, stealing softly down-stairs again, so as to be well settled in the drawing-room before the gentlemen came in.

Traversing the library, she heard Lady Mary's voice carrying on, as it seemed, a subdued, yet sustained conversation, in a little recess adjoining, which could hardly be called a boudoir, but was so far habitable, that in it there usually stood a lamp, a chess-board and a card-table. Mrs. Lushington would not have _listened_, be sure, to save her life, but the _Dublin Evening Mail_ lay close at hand on a writing-table. She became suddenly interested in a Tipperary election, and the price of pigs at Belfast.

Lady Mary's accents were low, grave, even sorrowful. It was difficult to catch more than a sentence here and there; but, judging by the short, quick sobs that replied to these, they seemed to produce no slight effect on the other party to the conversation.

Mrs. Lushington smiled behind her paper. What she heard only confirmed what she suspected. Her eyes shone, her brow cleared. She felt like a child that has put its puzzle together at last.

Lady Mary warmed with her subject; presently she declared, distinctly enough, that something was "not like _you_, my dear. In any other girl I'd have called it bold, forward, unwomanly!"

"Oh, mamma! mamma! don't say that!" pleaded a voice that could only belong to poor Norah. "If _you_ think so, what must _he_ have thought? Oh dear! oh dear! what shall I do? What shall I do?"

"It's never too late to remember your duty, my child," answered Lady Mary, "and I'm sure your father thinks as I do;" but though the words sounded brave enough, there was a tremble in the mother's voice that vibrated from the mother's heart.

"And I'll never see him again now, I _know_!" murmured Norah so piteously that Lady Mary could hardly keep back her tears.

"Well, it's not come to that yet," said she kindly. "Annyways, it's wise to make ready for the worst. Kiss me, dear, and mind what I've been telling ye. See now, stay here a bit, till you're more composed. I'll send in little Ella to keep ye company. The child won't take notice, and ye can both come back together into the drawing-room, and no more said."

But long ere Lady Mary could finish her caresses, and get her motherly person under weigh, Mrs. Lushington had slipped into the billiard-room, where she was found by the gentlemen practising winning hazards in solitude, and where, challenging Lord St. Abbs to a game, she was left discomfited by his very uncivil rejoinder--

"I don't play billiards," said his lordship, and turned on his heels without further comment or excuse.

It was a new sensation for Mrs. Lushington to find herself thus thrown on general society, without at least one particular admirer on whose devotion she could rely. She didn't like it. She longed to have a finger in that mischief which is proverbially ready for "idle hands to do." On three people she now resolved to keep close and vigilant watch. These were Norah, St. Josephs, and Satanella.

The conduct of this last seemed baffling in the extreme. She had scarce vouchsafed a word to the General during dinner, had scowled at him more than once with the blackest of her black looks, and comported herself altogether like the handsome vixen she could be when she chose. Now, under pretence of setting down her coffee-cup, she had brought him to her side, and was whispering confidences in his ear, with a tenderness of tone and bearing he accepted gratefully, and repaid a hundredfold.

"How tolerant are these _old_ men!" thought Mrs. Lushington, "and how kind! What lovers they make, if only one can bring oneself not to mind wrinkles, and rheumatism and grey hair! How gentle and how chivalrous! What patience and consideration! They don't expect a woman to be an angel, because they _do_ know a little about us; and perhaps because it _is_ only a little, they believe there is more than one degree between absolute perfection and utter depravity. If jealous, they have the grace to hide it; if snubbed, they do not sulk; if encouraged, they do not presume. They know when and where to speak, and to hold their tongues; to act, and to refrain. Besides, if one wants to make them unhappy, they are so sensitive, yet so quiet. A word or a look stings them to the quick, but they take their punishment with dignity; and though the blow be sharp and unprovoked, they never strike again. Let me see. I don't think I've had an admirer above forty--not one who owned to it, at least. It's a new experience. I declare, I'll try! This romantic old General would suit the place exactly, and I couldn't do a kinder thing for both, than to detach him from Blanche. The man is regularly wasted and thrown away. My gracious! isn't it ridiculous? If he could see us as we really are! If he only knew how much more willing a woman is to be controlled than a violent horse; how much easier to capture than a Sepoy column, or a Russian gun. And there he sits, a man who has ridden fearlessly against both, shrinking, hesitating, before a girl who might be his daughter--afraid, absolutely afraid, the gallant, heroic coward, to look her in the face! Is she blind? Is she a fool, not knowing what she throws away? or is she _really_ over head and ears in love with somebody else? She can't be breaking her heart for Daisy, surely, or why has she taken the General up again, and put herself so much _en evidence_ with him to-night? I'm puzzled, I own, but I'm not going to be beat. I'll watch her narrowly. I've nothing else to do. And it's an awful temptation, even when people are great friends. Wouldn't it be fun to cut her out with both?"

Thus reasoned Mrs. Lushington, according to her lights, scrutinising the couple she had set herself to study, while languidly listening to Lady Mary's conversation, which consisted, indeed, of speculations on the weather in the Channel, mingled with hospitable regrets for the departure of her guest, and the breaking-up of the party, which was to take place on the morrow.

"But ye'll come again next year," said this kind and courteous lady, who, anywhere but in her own house, would have disliked Mrs. Lushington from her heart. "And ye'll bring Miss Douglas with ye--if Miss Douglas she continues to be (with a significant glance at the General, holding, clumsily enough, a skein of much tangled silk). But, annyhow, I'll be lookin' for ye both Punchestown week, if not before, to give us a good long visit, and we'll teach ye to like Ireland, that we will, if kind wishes and a warm welcome can do't."

But even while she spoke, Lady Mary looked anxiously towards the door. Little Ella, a flaxen-haired romp of eleven, had jumped off long ago with a message for sister Norah, but neither having yet returned, the mother's heart ached to think of her handsome darling, smarting, perhaps, even under the mild reproof she had thought it wise to administer, perhaps weeping bitterly, to her little sister's consternation, because of the pain that burns so fiercely in a young unwearied heart--the longing for a happiness that can never be.

Presently, Lady Mary's brow cleared, and she gave a little sigh of relief, for Miss Ella's voice was heard, as usual, chattering loudly in the passage; and that young person, much elated at being still out of bed, came dancing into the room, followed by Norah, from whose countenance all traces of recent emotion had disappeared, and who looked, in her mother's eyes, only the prettier, that she was a shade paler than usual. While the younger child laughed and romped with the company, fighting shy of Lord St. Abbs, but hovering with great glee about papa, and entreating not to be sent upstairs for five more minutes, her sister stole quietly off to a lonely corner, where she subsided into an unoccupied sofa, with the air of being thoroughly fatigued.

Mrs. Lushington, covertly watching Satanella, wondered more and more.

Breaking away from her General, her silks, and her unfinished cup of tea, Miss Douglas walked across the room like a queen, took Norah's head in both hands, kissed her exactly between her eyebrows, and sat down composedly by her side.