CHAPTER XXV
Tito’s sketch of Dudley Deverell was not altogether a caricature; he was good-looking, selfish, and popular. Social success and an atmosphere of flattery, stimulated his weaknesses, and encouraged him to display the least attractive side of his nature—a cynical air, an amazing indolence, and a cool indifference to the opinions of other people. Life had been made pleasant for him, and he valued it accordingly. As a guest and attraction he was faithless, and had thrown more than one important hostess into a tempest of indignation, by sending at the eleventh hour a lying wire. He travelled, he shot and fished when his health permitted, and was just as bored as other young men, with no occupation, and great prospects.
Some day he was bound to marry, and possibly Tito would do as well as any one! She knew the place, and it would please her people. Tito was good company, and a ripping dancer, but inclined to be rowdy, and confoundedly plain. If he could not remedy one defect—he would the other.
And now there was another girl in the family—he had bestirred himself so far as to journey to Ashstead, to see what she was like? It was an amazing tale. An introduction to this peasant would afford him a novel sensation. New sensations were rare and precious, and he had run down just for one night, in order to interview the stranger; and behold! she was no stranger, but the pretty, cheeky girl who had chaffed him by the roadside in Ireland. The new cousin was uncommon; she was amazing; her manners and accent were abominable. However, she had lovely eyes and a saucy tongue, and he foresaw a considerable amount of entertainment.
These were some of Captain Deverell’s reflections as he gazed into his own face and executed a most finished white tie (he had been an Eton boy). Lady Mulgrave, too, had certain thoughts respecting Joseline. She had never seen Dudley so animated and interested, as on this occasion in the drawing-room.
Oh, that would never do! She would nip the intimacy in the bud at once. Dudley rarely remained longer than twenty-four hours, and she would see that he and the girl were kept apart. Captain Deverell slipped into the drawing-room just as dinner was announced, looking the ne plus ultra of the smooth-faced, smooth-headed young men of the period, and was just in time to lead Lady Grizel into the dining-room.
As Lord Mulgrave glanced round the beautifully decorated, well-lined table, he felt secretly vexed that Joseline, who had yet to distinguish between a dinner-knife and a dessert-knife, and to whom a finger-glass was a puzzle, should not have been allowed a little breathing space before being placed on exhibition.
Certainly she looked surprisingly like the rest of the company, save that she was much more attractive. With her wonderful skin, her burnished hair, her fine features, and exquisitely turned throat, it might be her mother come to life. And she was suitably dressed! Miss Usher had proved, indeed, a treasure. Then he considered his wife at the head of the table, a fashionable figure, with wonderful hair and complexion, a generous display of her splendid neck and shoulders, a French gown, the family diamonds, and her best society smile.
Lady Mulgrave glanced frequently at Joseline; she was a remarkable object, and Captain Deverell’s eyes strayed to her too. The girl seemed to be both beautiful and discreet. She scarcely spoke, she scarcely ate, but crumbled bread and uttered monosyllables. Once she assured a man-servant that “she wanted no more sauce—she had lashings!” What were lashings? “Oh, if she would only talk!” said Lady Mulgrave to herself. Some one had been advising her to hold her tongue. However, her hands were red; she had upset her neighbour’s champagne, eaten her neighbour’s bread, and dropped her spoon. Yet, when all was said, the peasant girl had undergone the ordeal of her first dinner-party, with respectable self-possession.
After dinner, Joseline was formally presented to various important dowagers in the drawing-room, who found the girl pretty, well turned out, but oh! so stupid! She scarcely opened her lips.
Then the men came crowding in, conversation became general, bridge-tables were set out, and Joseline found her tongue.
“Do you play bridge?” inquired Captain Deverell, sinking into a seat beside Joseline, whilst another man hovered near.
“No, I never heard tell of it till to-day,” she answered; “and is it with a ball, or what?”
“No; with cards.” Then, speaking as to a child, “You know cards—playing cards?”
“Yes, and like them finely too. I’ve never heard of the game you mean, but I know ‘spoil fire’ and ‘beating Jack out of town.’”
“That must be a most exciting game,” drawled her cousin. “How many beat him? Not more than one at a time, I hope?”
“As many as likes; it makes no odds.”
“Are you fond of motoring?” inquired a man who did not see why Deverell should engross the beauty.
“Well, I’ll tell ye after I’ve been on one. I once got a lift on a traction-engine—me and a girl—I mean, a girl and myself—and I suppose it’s the same sort of thing?”
“Only the pace is slightly different.”
“Yes; but the noise, and the joggling, and the frightening of horses and cattle, is all one.”
“I daresay you are right there,” he assented.
“What part of Ireland have you lived in?” inquired a smartly dressed lady, who was seated near Joseline.
“The south, near Glenveigh.”
“Oh, yes; a great place for fishing, is it not?”
“I would not say that; but it’s where people come looking for fishing.”
“And don’t get it. I see! By the way, does not Mrs. Borrodaile live in that part of the world?”
“She does so, at the Court.”
“I suppose you know her—er—by sight?”
Joseline nodded. “I seen her in the chapel.”
“Do tell me what she is like?”
“Well, some makes out she is handsome; but I’d call her a very streelish lady.”
“Streelish!” she repeated. “You mean stylish?”
“No, no, I do not. She has a great streel on her—long, sweeping things—and looks as if she was falling out of her clothes.”
“Really?” she laughed. “I must inquire into this. I’ve not seen her for ages; she is my cousin.”
“Is she so?” rejoined Joseline imperturbably. “I believe she is very good to the poor. Her kitchen-maid was a friend of mine and thought a power of her. Still and all, she has a rakish look!”
This newly discovered heiress was a unique creature, with her distinguished face and her extraordinary talk. She was splendid fun; people began to hover near her. Her father watched her with nervous apprehensions. It was too bad of her ladyship to bring the child forward before she had a little experience of society! But her ladyship had her own views; she wished to make her husband uncomfortable and ashamed of his low-bred daughter. He now joined the circle, and with unexpected animation, urged people to seat themselves at bridge.
Bridge, the all-fascinating, soon scattered Joseline’s little court; and presently she and her father stole away together to have a talk in the library. They were not missed.
When Joseline had retired, Lord Mulgrave, as he smoked alone, began to ask himself if he would not have been wise to have accepted Lottie’s broad hint, and sent the child to a school for a few months, just to rub off the rough edges of her vocabulary?
The shooting party were to have a grand battue the following morning. All the ladies who were not sportswomen were to meet the guns at a keeper’s cottage, and there share their luncheon. But some of the women preferred to walk with the guns. These included Tito, who begged Joseline to accompany her to the neighbourhood of a celebrated warm corner, where they took their stand; but after a very short time Joseline and her dog made their way elsewhere. She had no taste for the spectacle. As she struggled through the undergrowth, she suddenly came upon Dudley Deverell, gun in hand, his loader beside him, awaiting the magic words “Mark over!”
“I say, what in the world are you doing here? and with a dog too! If the governor sees it he will be furious,” he drawled. “If you don’t mind you’ll get shot.”
“The dog will stick to me, and I’m striving to get out of the wood and doing my big best; but wherever I go there are guns and slaughter. Pah!” she exclaimed, “grown-up men shooting tame pheasants! Why don’t you wring their necks, and have done with it!”
Dudley Deverell, who prided himself on being a dead shot and a keen sportsman (when his health permitted), stiffened and coloured with annoyance. What did this girl know of shooting or sport? She really was a young savage! “I see you don’t approve of us, which is deplorable; for you will have to remain here till the end of the beat.”
“Who says so?” she demanded.
“I do. You may get shot. Mark over!” He raised his gun. Bang! bang! went two barrels, and a couple of rocketters came crashing heavily down. One of them fluttered about till it was put an end to. “What do you think of that?” he inquired.
“I call it a horrid sight!” was the unexpected reply. “There is no chance or fair play in it. But I suppose the poulterers have to be supplied!”
“Pray what do you know about poulterers?”
“A sight more than I want to! Haven’t I spent all my life, till the last two months, rearing chickens, and selling eggs?”
“Oh! Really! And how did you dispose of them?”
“To the gentry.”
“You did not kill them I presume?”
“No. I never had the nerve; but I plucked some of them with me own two hands.”
“Still, I suppose you made a good thing of it?”
“No then, I didn’t; though I had one lady, a big customer—till we fell out.”
“About eggs? A bad egg, eh?”
“No. There you are out. My eggs were the best. It was over a gold locket and chain.”
“How was that?”
“She made out as her son had given it to me.”
“And she was wrong?”—smiling. “It was the other fellow?”
“Well, yes, if I’m a fellow, for I gave it to myself.”
“And the lady’s son—was he one of the crowd you——?”
“What does my father do with all the game?” she interrupted brusquely.
“I’m sure I’ve no idea. He has the best coverts in the county, and that’s enough for me. What an odd girl you are!” he said suddenly. “Don’t you feel it yourself?”
“I feel I am the odd one out at present. And you are a queer sort of man.”
“I—queer? In what way?” he asked, with a touch of hauteur in his tone.
“Oh, rambling about the world, looking for something to kill, same as a boy birds-nesting, and not doing a hand’s turn, good or bad.”
“Ah, I declare you are a young reformer”—colouring angrily. “And you must know such a jolly lot about the world, and men of the world—don’t you?” he added ironically.
“There, now you are laughing at me. I’m no reformer. God knows there’s plenty of faults in me, and I’ve no call to be picking holes in you, or the likes of you; but I can’t keep me tongue quiet.”
“You can keep it very quiet sometimes—for instance, last night at dinner.”
“And hard set to do it. I’ve always been a terrible talker. Tell me, is it true, that, with all the foreign countries you have seen, and the strange places you have pried into, you have never in your mortal life been down one of your own mines, nor seen how things is going with men and beasts that make your money? There! now I see you’re real mad. I didn’t mean to torment ye!”
Before Dudley could make a fitting and crushing reply, steps approached from behind them, and a man called out, “Hullo, Deverell, what luck? You had a hot corner!” But all that Deverell displayed was four brace. “Ah, you’ve had a young lady with you I see.” As the girl pushed through the laurels, and fought her way on to a path, she heard the voice declare, “They are the very deuce out shooting.”
“Yes,” acquiesced her cousin, with unflattering emphasis, “an infernal nuisance.”
So that was Dudley’s verdict. She was an infernal nuisance! She halted for a moment to digest this fact. It was now time for the lunch at the keeper’s cottage, and she encountered most of the party on their way to the rendezvous as she once more emerged into the open.
* * * * *
“Lady Mulgrave, is it possible that I see you refusing our standing dish, Irish stew?” said Dudley Deverell.
“I believe I shall have enough elsewhere,” she answered, with significance. “What do you think of your new cousin?” she continued, as she helped herself carefully to cutlets.
“I am not prepared to give an opinion at such short notice.”
“Then I gather that it is not a case of love at first sight?”
“I don’t believe in that humbug; and besides, I saw her in Ireland.”
“No!”—suddenly putting down her glass.
“Yes, by chance—as Mary Foley. I had not the smallest idea who she was then.”
“And what did she look like?”
“Oh, a pretty, saucy, country girl, with lots to say for herself. I never was so amazed as when I discovered her last night in the drawing-room! You could have floored me with the traditional feather!”
“She does not talk much now,” said Lady Mulgrave. “Evidently she has been advised, that silence is best.”
“It must be a trial, for I heard a man describe her as ‘the gabbiest little divil in the country.’”
“Oh, I expect she will soon find her tongue.”
“And her feet?” supplemented Captain Deverell.
“I’m not so sure of that; it takes some time to rub off twenty-one years of the cabin.”
“She is not awkward—no, not a bit.”
“Except when she spills things over people, and breaks wine-glasses. You don’t think her pretty, surely?”
“Yes; very pretty, in an uncommon style.”
“A very uncommon style. What a mixture—French, English—reared in Ireland!”
“She has some curious ideas.”
“Dear me! I had no notion that she had any ideas at all.”
“Oh, yes; with regard to shooting, and idle young men, who won’t do a hand’s turn!”
“Nonsense! How amusing! You and she must have become delightfully confidential among the laurels! She is a frightful flirt; any one can see that with half an eye.”
“Well, I cannot, with two eyes.”
“Oh, but you will. Oh, she’ll try her prentice hand—and a red hand it is!—on you, of course!”
“How do she and Tito hit it off?”
“Pretty well. You know Tito has the temper of an angel; so unselfish and sweet. She and I are running over to Paris to do some shopping for ten days. Any chance of seeing you, Dudley?”
“Perhaps. The old place, I suppose?”
“Yes; and Joseline and her father will have the house to themselves, and be able to make much of one another.”
“He seems immensely devoted,” said Dudley.
“Yes. He is full of sentiment, you know. There is, however, one drawback; she is a Catholic.”
“Well, I agree with the earl. It is something to be anything in the present day. Personally, I like a woman to have a religion.”
“But we all have,” protested the lady.
“I suppose you think so. At any rate, you worship the Golden Calf.”
“Really, Dudley!” she said, in an offended tone, “you do say the rudest things! Your manners are not improving.”
“No, wearing a bit thin. Well, I must run over when you are in Paris, and see if I can’t give them a touch of French polish!”