MICKEY CASEY’S CHRISTMAS DINNER-PARTY.
In a large, gloomy, bald-looking house in Merrion Street, Dublin, lived a red-faced, red-haired little attorney rejoicing in the name of Mickey Casey. There is no man better known in Green Street than Mickey, and no member of the profession whose services are more eagerly retained by the luckless ones whose “misfortunes” have brought them within range of the “blessing of the recorder.” Mickey knows the exact moment to bully, concede, or back out; and as for the law, it has been said of him that there is not a dirty lane or alley in the whole of the Acts of Parliament in which he has not mentally resided for the benefit of his clientèle, as well as to his own especial emolument. When Mr. Casey was put up for membership of the Law Club, there was much muttering and considerable frowning in the smoking-room of that legally exclusive establishment while his chances of success were being weighed in the balance and found wanting; but the election being judiciously set down for the long vacation, and Mickey having offered several of the leading members unlimited shooting over his trifle of property in the neighborhood of Derrymachulish—which, as all well-informed people are aware, lies in the very heart of the County Tipperary—somehow or other he pulled through by the “skin of his teeth,” and became socially, as he was by act of Parliament, a gentleman in the profession.
Mickey was a cheery little man, who loved a drop of the “crayture” not wisely but too well, and whose whole soul was wrapped up in his only child, a daughter, a mincing young lady, who was now close upon her nineteenth birthday, and who bore a most unmistakable resemblance to her sire in the color of her hair, her “chaney blue” eyes, and a bulbous-shaped—vulgarly termed thumbottle—nose.
“I’ve spent oceans of money on me daughter’s education, sir,” Mickey would exclaim. “Oceans—Atlantic and Pacific. She’s had masters and mistresses, and tutors and governesses, and short lessons and long lessons, some at a guinea apiece, sir—yes, begar, a guinea for thirty minutes jingling on a piana. But she’s come out of it well; I’ve got her through, and the sentence of the court is that she’s as fine a performer as there is in Dublin in the way of an amatewer.”
Mrs. Casey was a very stout, very florid, very untidy lady, whose face never bore traces of any recent lavatory process, and whose garments appeared to have dropped upon her from the ceiling by chance, retaining their original pose. The parting of her hair bore a strong resemblance to forked lightning, and her nails reminded the visitor of family bereavement, so deep the mourning in which they were invariably enshrined. She, in common with her husband, was wrapped up in her daughter, and lost to every consideration other than the advancement of her child’s welfare and happiness.
Matilda Casey was spoiled in her cradle, spoiled at school, spoiled at home. Her word was law, her every whim gratified, her every wish anticipated. Her parents were her slaves. Dressed by Mrs. Manning, the Worth of Dublin, at fancy prices, the newest Parisian toilettes were flaunted upon Miss Casey’s neat little figure, whilst her mother went in greasy gowns of antiquated date and old-world pattern. The brougham was at her beck, and Mrs. Casey was flattered beyond measure when offered a seat in it. She asked whom she pleased to Merrion Street, and many people came and went whom her mother never even saw. In furtherance of her musical talents she had boxes at the Theatre Royal and Gaiety for any performance it pleased her Serene Highness to select, while she forced her father to run the gauntlet of musical societies in order to ensure the necessary vouchers of admission.
And yet Matilda Casey was by no means a bad sort of girl. Her heart was in the right place, but her brains were blown out—to use a homely metaphor—by the flattery and incense which were being perpetually offered up at her shrine, until she was seized with a mad craving to enter the portals of the best society.
Hitherto she had but stood at the gate, like the Peri, gazing through the golden bars, and was more or less inclined to accept her position; but there came a time when she resolved upon endeavoring to force her way through.
The task that lay before her was a terrible one—a task full of weeping, and wailing, and mortification, and heart-burning, and gnashing of teeth. Society in Dublin is as exclusive as in the Faubourg St. Germain. The line is so distinctly drawn that no person can cross it by mere accident. “No trespassers admitted” is written up in letters of cold steel. The viceregal “set” won’t have the professional set, save those whose offices entitle them to the entrèe, and then they are but tolerated. The professional set won’t know the mercantile set, and here society stops short. A shopkeeper, be his store as large as Stewart’s and be he as wealthy as Rothschild, has no chance. He is a Pariah, and must pitch his tent out in that wilderness peopled by nobodies. The great struggle lies with the mercantile people to become blended with the professionals. This is done by money. Of course there are exceptional cases, but such a case is rara avis in terris.
Matilda Casey was in no set. The people with whom she was acquainted, though not amongst the outcasts, held no position whatsoever. Clerks in the Bank of Ireland residing at Rathmines; commercial travellers; custom-house employés; attorneys of cadaverous practice, or of a practice that meant no weight in the profession; needy barristers perpetually kotowing to her father for business, and obsequiously civil to her as business—these people with their wives formed her surroundings, and she was sick of them, tired, disgusted, bored to death. Why should she not be acquainted with the daughter of Mr. Bigwig, Q.C., who resided next door? Surely she played better than Miss Bigwig, and dressed better, and rode in her brougham, while Miss B. trudged in thick-soled boots in the mud. She had left cards on the Bigwigs upon their coming to Merrion Street, but her visit had never been returned, while that shabby little girl, Miss Oliver, was for ever in and out there; and what was Miss Oliver’s papa but an attorney?
Why was she not at some of the balls perpetually going on around her?—the rattling of the cabs to and from which, during the night and morning, kept her awake upon her tear-bedewed pillow.
Why did the Serges, of the firm of Serge & Twist, the linen-drapers in Sackville Street, leave her out of their invitations to their afternoon teas? Assuredly they were no great swells, and she had driven Miss Serge on more than one occasion in her brougham, and had sent Mrs. Serge a bouquet of hot-house flowers when that lady was laid up with the measles.
How came it that their social circle never increased save in the wrong direction? Had she not persuaded her papa to give a brief to young Mr. Bronsbill, who was possessed of as much brains as a nutmeg-grater, and whose advocacy cost Mr. Casey’s client his cause, in order to become acquainted with his family?—Mr. B. having informed her—the treacherous villain!—that his mother and sisters intended to call upon her.
Had she not thrown open the house to Mr. and Mrs. Minnion, whom she had met at the Victoria Hotel, Killarney, the preceding summer, in the hope of those delightful introductions which the artful Mrs. M. had held out like a glittering jewel before her entranced and eager gaze? Had not Mr. and Mrs. Minnion eaten, drunk, and slept in Merrion Street? And whom did they introduce? A little drunken captain of militia, who insisted upon coming there at unlawful hours of the night, and in calling for brandy and soda-water, as if the establishment was a public-house, and not even a respectable hotel!
But Fortune is not for ever cruel, and the wheel will turn up a prize at possibly the least expected moment.
Mickey Casey knew his daughter’s heart-burning, and strove might and main to ease it by even one throb. He gave dinner-parties to the best class of men with whom he was acquainted, feeding them like “fighting-cocks” upon petit dîners served by Mitchell, of Grafton Street, and giving them wines of the rarest vintages from the cellars of Turbot & Redmond.
“Ye’ll come to see us again, won’t ye?” he would say to his guest. “And I say, just bring your wife the next time. Me daughter will send the brougham—cost a hundred and fifty at Hutton’s—say Monday next.”
The guest would declare how delighted his wife would be to make the acquaintance of so charming a young lady as Miss Casey; but when the Monday came round, and with it a dinner fit for the viceroy, the guest would arrive wifeless, the lady being laid up with a cold, or “that dreadful baby, you know,” or “visitors from the country,” and the banquet would be served in a lugubrious silence, save when the daughter of the house ventured upon some cutting sarcasm anent snobbery and stuck-up people.
Matilda Casey could make such a guest wish himself over a mutton-chop in his own establishment, instead of the salmi of partridge or plover’s eggs served in silver dishes at Number 190 Merrion Street: and she did it, too.
“I’ve news for ye, Matilda,” exclaimed Casey one evening as he took his seat at the dinner-table. “I’ve news for ye, pet. I defended old Colonel Bowdler in a case in which a servant sued him for wages, and got him off at half-price. He’s on half-pay, lives with his wife in Stephen’s Green, and is a tip-topper, mixing with the lord-lieutenant’s household as if they were his own.”
“Well, and what is that to me?” exclaimed Miss Casey with considerable asperity.
“This, me darling: he was so pleased at the way I got him out on half-pay—ha! ha! ha!—that he and his wife—wife, mind ye—are coming to call on you to-morrow.”
Mrs. Casey was never taken into account, Matilda being the central figure.
“Pshaw! I wonder you can be such a fool, papa. It’s the old story,” retorted his daughter. “This colonel will come here, eat our dinners, drink our wine, and perhaps drop his wife’s card without her knowledge, as Mr. Neligan did—as we found out to our mortification when we went to return a visit that was never paid, and were politely told by Mrs. Neligan that her husband had never even mentioned our names to her.”
“Never fear, Matilda. We’re in the right box this time. They’ll be here to-morrow, you may depend upon it.”
Casey had his own good reasons for believing that the colonel would bide tryste—of which more anon. The morrow came, and with it Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler.
The colonel was a chatty, elderly gentleman of imposing aspect and dyed hair; his wife a tall, gaunt female, with a vulture-like appearance, and a sort of sergeant-major-in-petticoats look—the outcome of many a hard-fought campaign. The colonel had sketched Casey and Casey’s social desires, and Mrs. Bowdler, like the shrewd veteran that she was, took in the situation at a glance.
The flutter of excitement at 190 Merrion Street was intense when the thundering knock came to the door, accompanied by a crashing pull at the bell.
“Be awfully civil to these people, Jemima,” whispered the colonel as he entered, “and we can forage here three times a week. Promise them the moon.”
Mrs. Casey fled to her bedroom for the purpose of arranging her person in a gorgeous mauve moire-antique all over grease-spots, and Matilda rushed frantically to the drawing-room, in order to be en pose to receive the welcome visitors.
The coachman, who acted also in the capacity of butler, was feverishly hurried from his den at the back of the house, bearing with him a gentle aroma of the stable, and, even while opening the hall-door, was engaged in thrusting his arms into the sleeves of a coat—a perfect suit of mail in buttons.
“Mrs. Casey at home?” asked Mrs. Bowdler.
“I dunno whether the misthris is convaynient, ma’am, but Miss Casey is above in the dhrawin’-room. Won’t yez come in anyhow?” And the man motioned them to ascend with considerable cordiality and welcome.
“Take these cards, please.”
“Well, ma’am, me hands is a thrifle dirty; but av it obliges ye—” and hastily brushing the fingers of his right hand upon the legs of his trowsers, he took the extended pasteboard in as gingerly a manner as if he expected it to explode there and then.
The visitors stood in the hall, and so did Luke Fogarty.
“What am I for to do wud this ma’am?” he asked, eyeing it with a glance full of concern.
“Hand it to Miss Casey,” replied Mrs. Bowdler.
“Oh! that’s it, is it?” And he darted up-stairs with an alarming alacrity.
“This is a charming ménage,” said Mrs. Bowdler.
“A fine open country, my dear; no concealed enemy.”
“Yez are for to folly me,” shouted Fogarty from the top of the stairs.
Matilda was enchanted to see them, and ordered sherry and cake. Mrs. Bowdler professed herself charmed to make Miss Casey’s acquaintance, and declared she quite resembled the lord-lieutenant’s youngest daughter “And in manner, too, Miss Casey, you quite remind me of her. We are perpetually at the Viceregal Lodge, and very intimate with the Abercorns. We are asked to everything, and—he! he! he!—it costs us a small fortune for cabs.”
“You can have my brougham, Mrs. Bowdler.”
“Oh! dear, no, my dear young lady, that would never do; but if you lend it to me occasionally to take out dear Lady Maude Laseilles, who is such an invalid. Do you know her?”
Matilda replied in the negative.
As a matter of fact, no such person existed, but it suited Mrs. Bowdler to create her, Mrs. B. being a lady who would make a shilling do duty for half a crown. She was a veteran of infinite resources, who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and who was now bent upon taking her change out of the world. She had heard of the craving to enter the portals of society that was devouring Matilda Casey—the attorney had openly confided the fact to the colonel—and was resolved upon making the most of the situation. The Bowdlers were hangers-on at the Castle, mere hacks, who attended the drawing-rooms, the solitary state ball to which they were annually invited, and St. Patrick’s ball with undeviating punctuality. They resided in a pinched-looking house in Stephen’s Green, where Mrs. Bowdler “operated” the colonel’s half-pay with the financial ability of a Dudelac, stretching every sixpence and racking the silver coin to its final gasp. They went everywhere, accepting every invitation, “foraging on the enemy” as the colonel expressed it, giving no return. Trading upon his military rank, they managed to go about a good deal amongst very third-rate people, who were glad to have a colonel to dinner, and a lady who could talk so familiarly of half the peerage as his wife. A more singularly worthless or selfish pair was not to be found, or a pair who better knew how “to work the oracle,” than Colonel Brownlow Bowdler, late of Her Majesty’s Fifty-ninth Regiment of Infantry, and Jemima, his consort.
Mrs. Casey came smilingly into the drawing-room and almost embraced Mrs. Bowdler.
“What will ye take, now? Sure ye must take something. Matilda, make Mrs. Colonel Bowdler take something. Colonel, you’ll take a bottle of champagne—do, now, that’s right; and I’ll get a little jelly for Mrs. Colonel Bowdler, and then Matilda will play for ye. She plays lovely.”
“O mamma!” exclaimed Matilda.
“Now, ye know ye do, darling.” And Mrs. Casey, who is the soul of hospitality, joyously descended to the lower regions, in order to send up the delicacies she so temptingly set forth.
“Are you going to the ball the Twelfth are giving at the Royal Barracks?” asked Mrs. Bowdler.
“I am not, Mrs. Bowdler, but I wish I was,” replied Matilda.
“Colonel, do you hear that? Miss Casey has not received a card for the Twelfth ball. You must take care that she gets one.”
“I’ll go to Major McVickers at once—the old rascal and I served in India together—and see what can be done.”
He had been to Major McVickers five times already to secure invitations for himself and wife, but without success.
Luke Fogarty entered with an enormous silver salver bearing the champagne, jelly, fruit, and cake. He would have preferred to have been behind a runaway horse, ay, and down-hill to boot. He regarded the jelly with a savage eye, muttering “Woa! woa!” in an undertone as it shook from the movement of the tray, accompanying the exclamation by that purring sound so dear to grooms when closely applying the curry-comb.
“Open the champagne, Fogarty,” said Matilda in a tone of lofty command.
“To be shure I will, miss,” replied the willing retainer, diving into the pockets of his trowsers in search of an iron-moulded corkscrew, which he eventually brought to the surface after considerable effort. “I’ll open it in a jiffy.”
He tortured and twisted the wires until he was nearly black in the face from sheer exertion, but, although yielding to his pressure, they still clung perplexingly to the cork.
“Bad cess to thim for wires! but they have the fingers nearly cut aff o’ me. Curse o’ the crows on them!” making another despairing effort; “but I’m not bet yit.”
The wire, slipping suddenly aside, gave freedom to the cork, which bounded gaily against the colonel’s nose, and, ricochetting, lodged in the bosom of Mrs. Bowdler’s dress, while the froth spurted high in the air, descending in seething showers upon the gallant warrior’s head, disarranging the few brown hairs which were carefully laid across his bald, shining pate, resembling cracks upon an inverted china bowl, and causing him to utter maledictions strong and deep.
“See that, now!” exclaimed Fogarty, clapping his hand on the opening of the bottle. “It’s livelier nor spirits. Hould yer glass, colonel, or the lickher ‘ill be lost intirely.”
“Champagne is my favorite wine,” said Mrs. Bowdler, tossing off her glass without winking.
“And mine,” added the colonel, filling it for her again, and then replenishing his own.
“Oh! dear me, I’m so glad to know that. Fogarty, bring another bottle. We’ve heaps of it in the cellar at ninety-six shillings a dozen—a top price. You’ll always get good wine here,” said Mrs. Casey.
“The man who would give his guest bad wine ought to be blown from the muzzle of a gun,” observed the colonel, plunging at the jelly.
This came strangely from an individual who, whenever he gave a visitor a drink, gave it of a liquor warranted to kill at fifty yards. Young Bangs, of the Tenth, whose father instructed him to visit Bowdler, was laid up for an entire week after a teaspoonful of the colonel’s tap.
The second bottle of champagne appeared.
“Ye’d betther open this combusticle yerself, gineral,” suggested Fogarty; “an mind ye hould on to the cork, or it ‘ill give ye the slip as shure as there’s a bill on a crow.”
“I must introduce your dear daughter here to the Dayrolles,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “and to the Fitzmaurices. You will like Lady Fitzmaurice, Miss Casey, and I know she will like you.”
“Do you hear that, Matilda? Now, won’t ye play for Mrs. Colonel Bowdler?”
“I’m a very poor player,” simpered Matilda.
Nevertheless, she proceeded to the piano and dashed off a morceau of Chopin with considerable vigor, during which the colonel improved the occasion by pocketing a bunch of grapes and a good-sized cut of seed-cake.
“Bravissima!” he cried, as if in rapture. “Lord St. Lawrence must hear that, Jemima; we must try and get him to name a night.”
“We can reckon on Lady Howth.”
“Certainly. She’s always too glad to be asked.”
“And the Powerscourts?”
“By the way, that reminds me: we owe a visit at Powerscourt, do we not?”
“I can’t say, colonel, until I look at my list. We have such an enormous visiting list, Mrs. Casey,” turning to that lady, who was nearly caught in a feeble attempt at winking at her daughter, in order to beget that young person’s special attention to the delightful conversation going on between the visitors, and who was perfectly overwhelmed with dismay and apprehension lest she should have been perceived. “I put my engagements down alphabetically, and—he! he! he!—I’m so glad to think that you are so high on our list.”
The Bowdlers took their departure, after having promised to dine in Merrion Street on the following day.
“To-morrow will be Thursday, and we dine with the Commander of the Forces. Friday we dine at Lord Newry’s.”
“Never mind, my dear,” interposed the colonel, “I’ll come here. I’m heartily sick of those fearfully ceremonious banquets; besides,” he added, “we are not asked here every day, and Newry or Strathnairn will be glad to get us when they can.”
When Mickey Casey returned that evening from his office he found his wife and daughter in ecstasies over their newly-made acquaintances. There were no words in the English language sufficiently strong to convey a tithe of the admiration they entertained for them. Such elegance, such urbanity, such distinguished manners, such amiability!
“I’m going to the Twelfth ball,” cried Matilda, “and to be introduced to Lady Fitzmaurice and the Dayrolles, and dear Mrs. Bowdler is going to give a party for me, and to ask Lady Howth and Lord St. Lawrence and Lord Powerscourt all to hear me play. What shall I play? I must begin to practise at once. I’ll go to Pigott’s to-morrow for something new—the newest thing—and I’ll get Mrs. Joseph Robinson to give me six lessons.”
“I’ve asked them to dinner here,” said Mrs. Casey; “and only to think, Mick, I—”
“I do wish you’d say Mr. Casey, or at all events Michael, mamma,” burst in Matilda. “You see how dear Mrs. Bowdler addressed her husband. You’ll find it much more genteel.”
“Whatever you say, me darling. Well, Mister Casey—oh! I can’t do that after Micking him for twenty years,” she cried. “Well, Mick, what do you think, but the colonel gave up a dinner at the Commander of the Forces’ to come to us on Thursday.”
“Thursday, did ye say, Mary?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awkward; that’s to-morrow, and your brother Tim Rooney comes up in the morning to stop for a month.”
Mrs. Casey glanced timidly at her daughter, who gave a little shriek.
“It will never do, mamma. Uncle Timothy is too rough, too vulgar, and too careless of what he says and does, to meet Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler. It would destroy us at once. You must telegraph him, papa, not to come till Friday or Saturday.”
“I can’t, me honey, for he started this morning; and may be it’s in Tullamore he is while I’d be wiring to Inchanappa.”
Matilda clasped her hands in a sort of mute despair.
“He cannot dine at this table to-morrow,” she cried. “I’d rather put off the Bowdlers, first.”
“Suppose ye give him an early dinner and plenty of liquor, and send him with Fogarty to the play.”
“We will want Fogarty, papa. His livery opening the door looks very genteel.”
“It won’t do to insult him. Tim has twenty thousand pounds, and you’re his god-daughter, me darling,” said Casey.
“I wonder, if we told him that these people were very ceremonious and very grand, if he’d consent to dine alone,” suggested Matilda.
“That would only rouse Tim, my pet,” observed Mrs. Casey. “He’d just come in on purpose then, and if he got a sup in there would be no holding him.”
“What is to be done?” cried Matilda, starting from her chair and pacing the floor with long and hasty strides.
At this moment a short, sharp double knock was heard at the hall-door.
“That’s Tim,” groaned Mrs. Casey.
“A telegraph!” roared Fogarty, bursting into the room as if a human life depended upon his celerity.
“Yer in luck, Matilda, my pet; it’s from your uncle. Read it.”
It ran thus:
“From Tim Rooney, ‘The Ram’s Tail,’ Inchanappa, County Tipperary, to Mickey Casey, 190 Merrion Street, Dublin:
“I can’t stir for a couple of days. I have to bolus a horse, and Phil Dempsey is after drinking a cow on me, the blackguard!”
“What a relief!” cried Matilda Casey, throwing herself into an easy-chair.
The dinner at 190 was supplied by Murphy, of Clare Street, the Gunter, the Delmonico of Dublin.
“I don’t care a farden about the price,” said Mickey to the smiling caterer. “I want it done tip-top, and let the ongtrays be something quite out of the common; for Colonel and Mrs. Colonel Bowdler are to dine with us, and me wife is very anxious to have everything spiffy.”
Mrs. Casey was in a fever of preparation the livelong day, washing glasses, getting out wine, laying the table, while Matilda with her own fair hands fitted up the épergne with rare hot-house plants and crystallized fruits.
“Papa will take Mrs. Colonel Bowdler in to dinner, and Colonel Bowdler will take you, mamma.”
“Oh! no, me pet; I’d rather he’d take you.”
“But it’s not etiquette.”
“Oh! bother etiquette,” exclaimed Mrs. Casey, wiping her face in a napkin.
“It’s all very fine to say bother etiquette; but if we do not show it now, what will Colonel and Mrs. Colonel Bowdler think of us?”
The appalling consequences attendant upon her refusal to be led to the banquet by the gallant colonel smote the mind of Mrs. Casey with such considerable force that she at once assented to the proposal, lauding her daughter’s foresight to the very skies.
“You’re a wonderful child, dear; ‘pon me word, you think of everything.”
“The colonel will sit here, and I’ll put this bouquet opposite his chair with the menoo card; and Mrs. Bowdler will sit here, Fogarty,” addressing Luke, who was standing by with a portion of harness about his neck. “Take care that Colonel Bowdler gets enough of champagne.”
“Be me faix, thin, Miss Matilda, ye’d betther lave out a dozen anyhow, for he lapped it up yistherda like wather,” replied that functionary with a broad grin.
“And see that Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s glass is always full.”
“I’m thinkin’ she’ll see to that herself wudout thrubblin’ me,” muttered Fogarty.
“Ask Colonel Bowdler if he’ll take sherry or Madeira with his soup.”
“To be sure he will, miss.”
“I say ask him which he’ll take.”
“I’ll make bould to say he’ll take the both o’ thim,” grinned Fogarty, who, with that quick perception characteristic of his race, had already “measured his man.”
“Be very particular about the ongtray.”
“I will, miss, an’ the tay-thray too.”
“And above all things keep sober, Fogarty.”
“He’s a teetotaler,” chimed in Mrs. Casey. “Aren’t ye a teetotaler, Luke?”
There was a comical expression upon Luke’s face as he stoutly replied: “I am, ma’am; but I’m not a bigoted wan.”
At about four o’clock a note arrived from Mrs. Bowdler.
“Oh! my gracious, I hope there’s no disappointment,” cried Matilda, turning very pale, while dire apprehension was written in the pallid features of her mamma.
“I hope not; that would be awful, me pet.”
The note ran thus:
“292 Stephen’s Green, 3.30 o’clock.
“My Dearest Miss Casey: Our dear friend Major Beamish and his charming daughter, nearly related to the Beamishes of Cork, have just written to say that they will dine with us to-day. I must, therefore, with the MOST painful reluctance, ask of you to allow us to cancel our engagement to you. I cannot tell you how sincerely this grieves me, but the B.’s, though very old friends, are people of that haute distinction that one cannot treat as one possibly could wish.
“With kindest regards to your dear mamma, and with united kind regards from the colonel to all chez vous, I am, my dearest Miss Casey, yours affectionately,
Jemima Bowdler.”
“This is agonizing!” cried Matilda, ready to burst into tears.
“Our lovely dinner!” moaned Mrs. Casey.
“There is some fatality about us.”
“Wan pound five a head without wine, and seventeen and six extra for a pineapple.”
“Was ever anything so provoking? It’s enough to drive one mad!”
“I suppose Mick must ask in the apprentice to eat the dinner, as we’ve to pay for it. Such food for to cock up an apprentice with!” sighed Mrs. Casey.
Miss Casey perused the letter again, and finding P. T. O. in the corner, turned the page and read a postscript as follows:
“P. S.—The colonel has just come in, and what do you think he has the audacity to suggest?—that we ask your permission to bring the Beamishes to your dinner to-day. The colonel has taken such a fancy to you, dearest young friend, that he treats you as if he had been on intimate terms for years. He insists upon my writing this, but please to blame him for this piece of audacity.
J. B.”
Miss Casey’s joy knew no bounds. The Beamishes of Cork, one of the oldest families in Ireland—such a charming addition to the party. She would order round the brougham, and drive over to dear Mrs. Colonel Bowdler’s at once to thank her for such a signal mark of kindness; as for the colonel, she could have hugged the gallant veteran from sheer gratitude.
She did not know that the Bowdlers wished to shelve the hungry major and his daughter in a polite way, and provide them with a sumptuous repast at the expense of Mickey Casey. Not she, indeed; so she stepped into her carriage, and having driven, first, round to the caterer’s to order reinforcements, proceeded to Stephen’s Green, where she was received by Mrs. Bowdler in a small, dingy front room minus a fire, although it was late in December and bitterly raw and cold.
Mrs. Bowdler kissed her, and gushed over her, and begged to be excused for hurrying her away for the tyrant post, as she was compelled to finish a letter to her dearest friend, the wife of the governor-general of India. Miss Casey cut short her stay, as in duty bound, and Mrs. Bowdler ascended to the drawing-room, where three or four visitors were assembled around a fairly decent fire—one of the ladies, during the temporary absence of the hostess, having surreptitiously stirred it up—to whom she imparted the intelligence that she had just parted from the governess to Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby, whom that aristocratic personage had sent over in the Ponsonby brougham with a request that she and the colonel would dine in Fitzwilliam Place upon that day, whereat the visitors declared that Mrs. Geoffrey Ponsonby was evidently very desirous of Mrs. Bowdler’s company, and that it was a very remarkable instance of her esteem and regard.
At 6.30, military time, the company arrived, and were ushered into Mickey Casey’s study in order to uncloak. Major Beamish wore a short brown wig on the top of a very high, a very bald, and very shiny head. His eyes were small and watery, and his moustache, greased with a cheap ointment, lay like a solid cushion of hair beneath a nose with nostrils as expansive as those of a rocking-horse. He was attired in a faded suit of evening clothes, his shirt-bosom bearing the indelible imprint not only of the hand of Time, but of the hand of a reckless laundress, who hesitated not to use her nails upon the sierras of its coy and threadbare folds.
Miss Beamish was a gushing maiden of twenty anything, possessed of a profusion of frizzly fair hair, done in a simple and childlike fashion, and bound by a fillet of blue ribbon over a vast expanse of forehead. Her eyes were greenish gray, and not quite free from a suspicion of a squint. Her nose resembled that of her sire, and her mouth was almost concealed by her thin and bloodless lips. Her gaunt frame was enveloped in a gauzy substance over a pink silk, which betrayed the recent presence of the smoothing-iron. Bog-oak ornaments rattled around her neck, at her ears, and upon her lean and sinewy arms.
“Colonel an’ Missis Bowhowdler,” roared Fogarty, as the guests entered the drawing-room. “Major an’ Missis Baymish.”
“Miss, fellow, Miss,” impatiently cried the major.
“Miss Baymish, I mane,” adding in an undertone: “It’s not but she’s ould enough and tough enough for to be a missis tin times over.”
“This is so good of you,” said Matilda, shaking hands all round, “and so good of dear Mrs. Bowdler to give us the pleasure of having you.”
“Monstrous fine gal. Right good quarters,” observed the major to the colonel, glancing round the room at the superb mirrors, buhl cabinets, inlaid tables, rich hangings, and furniture upholstered in yellow satin.
“You might do worse than take this girl. Casey’s good for twenty thousand,” suggested the colonel.
“If Tibie was once quartered on the enemy I’d enlist again—I would, sir, by George! I’d take the shilling from that seductive and dangerous recruiting sergeant, Hymen,” exclaimed the major, wagging one soiled white glove and posing himself after a gratified and prolonged glance in the mirror.
“Miss Matilda,” whispered Fogarty, who had just entered, and who was endeavoring to attract her attention. “Miss Matilda! Miss Tilly!”
“What is it, Fogarty?” asked Miss Casey at length; and upon perceiving him, “What is it?” she repeated somewhat testily, as Mrs. Bowdler was engaged in narrating a delightful conversation with the lady-lieutenant.
“The masther’s clanin’ himself, an’ he wants a lind av yer soap, miss, as there’s not a screed in the house, be raisin’ av the misthris washin’ the glass an’ chany wild the rest av it.”
The guests filed down in the order prescribed by Matilda, save that she fell to the arm of Major Beamish, who overwhelmed her with compliments, which only lasted until the soup was served, as from that moment his attention became concentrated upon the delicacies placed before him, on which he opened so murderous and effective a fire as almost to paralyze the energies of the ubiquitous and perspiring Fogarty, and the solicitous attentions of a young lady from the kitchen, whose stertorous breathing made itself heard above the din and clatter of knives, forks, and conversation, in a distinct and somewhat alarming manner.
“Hi! some more soup. Another cut of fish. I’ll try that entrée again. Let me have that last entrée once more. Some turkey and ham. Why don’t you look alive with the champagne? A slice of roast beef—underdone. Some pheasant; ay, I’ll try the woodcock. Jelly, of course.” And the gallant major kept the servants pretty busily engaged during the entire repast.
Matilda was in a shimmer of delight. Her darling hopes were being realized at last, and society was budding for her. A colonel and his wife, a major and his daughter—why, what higher rank need any person desire? How friendly, how gracious, and how charmingly they ate and drank and praised everything! This was life—a life worth living; this was that delicious glow of which she had read in Lothair and other novels portraying fashionable existence.
While these rosy thoughts were coursing through her brain a noise was heard in the direction of the hall, and a man’s voice in tones of angry expostulation.
“Your servants are quarrelling, Mrs. Casey,” observed Mrs. Bowdler, holding up her hand to enjoin silence.
“It’s that Luke Fogarty; he can’t keep his fingers off the dishes, and the girl is—”
At this moment the individual in question burst into the apartment with an expression as if some fearful catastrophe had just happened.
“What is the matter, Fogarty?” demanded Mrs. Casey, glancing at her retainer with an inquiring eye.
“We’re bet, ma’am,” responded Fogarty in a half-whisper.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re bet up intirely. Misther Tim has came.”
Mrs. Casey felt as if she would have fainted, while Matilda bit her lips till the blood came; and as they were still gazing at each other in the direst consternation, Mr. Timothy Rooney entered the apartment, clad in a bulgy Ulster that had known fairs and markets and race-courses for several previous years, a felt hat of an essentially rakish and vulgar description, his pants shoved into his muddy boots after the fashion of a Texas ranger, while his hands were swollen and the color of beet-root.
“Company, be the hokey crikey!” he exclaimed, as he advanced to embrace the reluctant hostess. “Ah! Mary, ye didn’t expect me,” giving her a kiss that made the glass drops upon the chandelier jingle again.
“No, we didn’t expect you, Tim,” gasped his sister.
“No, of course not. Shure I sent ye a telegraph that that villyan of a Phil Dempsey drank me best cow on me—tellin’ ye that—”
“Won’t you take some dinner in your own room?” interposed his niece, now the color of a peony.
“Come over here and kiss your uncle, ye young rogue. Up-stairs, indeed! What would I do that for?”
“You are not exactly dressed for dinner.”
“Oh! I’ve a shirt on under this Ulster, and I’ll show a bit of the bussom, as the man said, never fear. Well, Mickey, me hearty, how goes it? Put it there,” extending his beet-root fist to his brother-in-law.
“My brother, a regular character, immensely wealthy; obliged to put up with his ways,” explained Mrs. Casey, while her daughter retired with Mr. Rooney, with a view to inducing that gentleman to refrain from again putting in an appearance.
“A very fine, joyous son of the Emerald Isle,” cried the colonel, helping himself to champagne.
“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major, following the good example of his senior officer, “we had just such a joyous, devil-may-care fellow in the Tenth. He resided in the bungalow with me, the compound being in common. One morning, while enjoying chotohassary—the major aired his Indian experiences and Hindoo acquirements upon all occasions— I happened to call my kitmagar as well as my consumar, who was—”
The narrative was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Rooney and his despairing niece. Tim had given his face what is commonly known as a “Scotch lick,” causing it to shine again. He was about forty years of age, rough-looking as a Shetland pony, and a “warm man”—i.e., the possessor of a few thousands in the bank and of a well-to-do, well-stocked farm.
“I’m tidy enough now, I think; at all events, yer friends will be aisy on a traveller. Why don’t ye introduce us, Mick? Where are yer manners?”
He was presented in due form by the abashed Casey, and, after having shaken hands with all round, commenced a vigorous attack upon a slice of turbot with his knife, plunging that useful instrument two or three inches into his mouth at every helping, until Miss Beamish, who was seated opposite, shuddered with apprehension.
“Is there anything the matter with ye, ma’am?” he demanded, upon observing a ghastly contraction of the muscles of her face.
“N-nothing,” she stammered.
“Ye haven’t got a pain?”
“Uncle, help yourself to champagne,” shrilly interposed Matilda.
“Pshaw! get me some whiskey, me pet,” adding, as he winked facetiously upon Mrs. Bowdler, “champagne is taydious.”
“By and by, uncle,” said the agonized girl.
“A little drop wouldn’t harm Miss Baymish there, Matty; she looks as if—”
“Take some more beef, Tim,” put in Mrs. Casey.
“Well, just wan skelp more, Mary. Room for wan inside, as the man said.”
When the ladies had retired Mr. Rooney stretched his legs beneath the table and his body on the chair until his chin was nearly on a level with the table.
“Now, Mickey, in with the hot water, and let the girl put a kettle under the pump. Are ye fond of sperrits, major?”
“Well, the fact is that spirits don’t agree with me.”
“Oh, then, Mickey Casey has some that will oil the curls of yer wig for ye.”
“When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” observed the major hastily, “there happened to be a very rollicking, gay, charming fellow of our mess, who shared my bungalow with me—the compound being in common. One morning I was engaged at chotohassary and—”
“What the dickens is chotohassary?”
“Breakfast, Mr. Rooney.”
“I never heard it called by that name before. Go on, you old son of a gun.”
“Well, sir,” continued the major somewhat stiffly, “I had occasion to call my kitmagar.”
“Kit who?” asked Tim.
“Kitmagar, one of my servants.”
“An Irishman, of course.”
“No, sir, a Hindoo.”
“Well, this flogs; are ye listening to this, Mickey?” addressing Casey, who had drawn off the colonel.
“Am I listening to what?” asked the host rather gruffly.
“To this old fogy here.”
“Really, Mr. Rooney—” began the offended major.
“Don’t mind him, Major Beamish,” cried Casey, “but pitch into the claret; it’s Château Lafitte of a comet vintage. At least, Redmond told me so, and he ought to know.”
“It’s a very fine wine, Casey—a soft wine, sir, in superb condition, and heated to perfection,” observed the major, tossing off a glassful and quickly replacing the goblet.
“Goes down like mother’s milk,” added the colonel, following suit.
“Well, major, go on about Kit Megar,” urged Rooney.
“Coffee is in the dhrawin’-room, jintlemin,” yelled Fogarty, entering.
“Well, let it stay there, Luke.”
“Shall we join the ladies?” asked Casey, with a society air.
The colonel looked at the major, the major looked at the colonel, and both looked at the claret jugs.
“Oh! hang it all, no,” responded the major; “this wine is too good—much too good.”
“More power to yer elbow, Baymish! An old dog for a hard road,” laughed Tim Rooney. “Eh, Luke, this is a knowing old codger.”
Mr. Fogarty, being thus appealed to, gave a willing assent: “Up to every trick in the box.”
After the gallant warriors had sufficiently punished Casey’s cellar they repaired to the drawing-room. As they ascended the stairs they compared notes.
“Did you ever meet such a queer customer as this brother-in-law?”
“Never. He’s the most vulgar, insolent blackguard I ever encountered.”
“He has lots of money.”
“I wonder does he play loo?”
“We can ask him.”
“He’d play a lively game.”
“And could be plucked like a green gosling.”
To the intense relief of the Casey family, Mr. Rooney stoutly refused to adjourn to the upper regions, but remained in the dining-room smoking a short clay pipe and drinking whiskey-punch.
Miss Beamish, upon hearing that he was enormously wealthy and unmarried to boot, began to build a castle in Spain, in which she figured as châtelaine, while the uncultured proprietor was gradually toned down by those feminine influences which smooth the angles of the most rugged natures.
“I do like this child of nature, Miss Casey,” she gushed; “it is sweet to hear the wild bird in the full, untutored sweetness of its note. Shall we see your uncle again to-night?”
“I hope not,” was Matilda’s reply.
“Oh! why? He reminds me so much of an arrière pensée, a bright oasis in the desert of my life, that I feel as if I could—but why recall recollections that are fraught with bitterness, why strike a chord which produces but—discord?” letting her pointed chin drop upon the bog-oak necklet, which responded by a dull rattle.
Matilda played for the major—who marked her as the successor of the late Mrs. B——, wagging his be-wigged pate to the music and applauding with maudlin vigor.
“Exquisite! Divine! When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” And he jogged over the same road, to arrive as far as the consumar, when Mrs. Bowdler intimated that it was time to leave.
“But ye won’t go without supper? Just a sandwich and a glass of wine,” entreated Mrs. Casey.
Of course they wouldn’t go, and they didn’t go until they had partaken largely of both.
“Never was more charmed in my life,” exclaimed the colonel, as he bade good-night. “Right glad I refused Lord Howth.”
“I thought it was the commander-in-chief,” said Mrs. Casey artlessly.
“Ahem! of course, and so it was; but I have so many invites, you see, that I forget.”
Gentlemen who draw upon their imagination for their facts must needs possess accurate memories.
“You’ll all dine with us on Christmas day,” said Mrs. Casey.
“Oh! yes, do, please,” added Matilda.
“Do, colonel; do, major, like good fellows,” urged Casey.
“Well, really, my dear, I don’t know what to say,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, “but I fear we cannot get out of going to Lady Meath’s.”
“Oh! hang Lady Meath; you may go to her, I’ll come here,” laughed the colonel.
“It’s fixed,” said Casey; “and you, major?”
“I couldn’t say no to such a good offer. When I was quartered in Dum Dum—”
“Is this old fogy at it still?” asked Tim Rooney, emerging from the dining-room into the hall where they were now all assembled.
“We are coming to dine here on Christmas day, Mr. Rooney,” said Miss Beamish, casting a languishing look at him.
“Are ye? Thin upon me conscience ye’ll git a tail end of beef that will feed you for a fortnight—wan of me own cows. And all Mary here has to do is see that the wisps of cabbage is plenty.”
With great hand-shaking, and a general buzz of pleased excitement, the guests took their departure.
“What a success!” exclaimed Matilda, throwing herself on a sofa that had been wheeled out of the dining-room into the hall in order to make room, “except for”—nodding towards Tim, who was endeavoring to light a bedroom candlestick with a singularly unsteady hand.
“They all took to him,” whispered Mrs. Casey.
“I never got such a turn as when he came in. O mamma! I thought I should have died.”
“Well, aren’t the Bowdlers nice, agreeable people, Matilda?” demanded Mr. Casey.
“Delightful, exquisite! Such elegant refinement. And the Beamishes are equally well bred.”
“That major is a downy old bird.”
“He is a most perfect gentleman. How he did praise my playing!”
The Caseys did not see much of the Bowdlers during the next few days, the colonel having over-eaten himself, and his wife being laid up with an attack of bronchitis; but Major Beamish and his daughter were most constant in their attentions, calling, staying to dinner, going to the theatre—Casey paying for all, cabs included—coming home to supper, and other attentions equally delicate and one-sided. The major was very prononcé in his manner toward Matilda, who, while she accepted his homage, did not for a moment imagine it meant more than that excessive and chivalrous politeness which distinguishes the vieux militaire of any nationality.
Miss Beamish lay in wait for Tim Rooney, and spun her web as deftly as the uncouth movements of this desirable fly permitted. She adroitly learned his hours for going out, and invariably intercepted him.
“I’m always meeting that wan,” he observed to his sister. “She’s for ever in the street.”
“She’s a very elegant lady, Tim.”
“Elegant enough, but, as tough as shoe-leather.”
By degrees, however, the fair Circe interested him, and when the others were engaged in listening with rapt attention to the major’s oft-repeated story commencing, “When I was quartered at Dum Dum,” Tibie Beamish, eyes plunged into those of the Tipperary farmer, would hang upon his accents as he detailed his own “cuteness” in the purchase of a drove of heifers at the great fair of Ballinasloe, or how he palmed off a spavined pony upon a neighboring but less wide-awake grazier.
If a woman wants to win a man, let her listen to him, if he be fond of narrating his personal experiences; and what man does not revel in ego?”
“She is a nice little girl, Mary, and is not above learning a trifle. I’ll be bail she could go into Ballinasloe fair next October and finger a baste as well as that villyan Phil Dempsey, from the knowledge I give her.”
The spell was working.
Christmas day came, bright, crisp, and joyous. Snow had fallen for the previous few days, and was now hard and shining in the streets, rendering walking somewhat hazardous and sliding almost unavoidable.
Colonel and Mrs. Bowdler arrived very early at Merrion Street—in fact, just in time for luncheon—and by a strange coincidence Major Beamish and his daughter dropped in almost at the same moment. A walk was proposed, but abandoned, and the party, broken up into two camps, sat chatting around the fires in the back and front drawing-rooms.
Everybody is hungry on Christmas day. Everybody thinks of the boiled turkey, Limerick ham, roast beef, plum-pudding, and mince-pies. Why, then, should the guests of Mickey Casey prove an exception to the rule?
Fogarty announced the dinner in a voice that savored of a joyous anticipation. He had had a private and confidential snack with the cook, but merely enough to make him wish for more.
“That’s me tail end of beef,” exclaimed Tim Rooney, as the huge mound of golden fatted meat was uncovered, behind which the host sat in a state of total eclipse—“that’s me tail end, and a lovelier baste never nipped grass, nor the—”
“Will you carve this turkey, Tim?” interrupted his sister.
“To be sure I will, Mary; but ye must let me do it me own way,” divesting himself of his coat and proceeding to work with a will.
“O Tim!”
“O uncle!”
“Let him alone,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowdler, whose teeth were watering for a slice of the breast. “Such a gigantic bird requires to be carved sans cérémonie.”
“When I was quartered at Dum Dum—” began the major.
“See here, now, me ould codger, we’ve had enough of that singsong.”
The major smiled grimly and tossed off a glass of Amontillado.
“You are a character, Rooney,” he said.
Tim acquitted himself admirably, cutting the bird and innumerable jokes at the same time, many of them of a personal nature, such as allusions to the gallant major’s wig, which he called a “jasey,” the scragginess of Mrs. Bowdler, and the rosy tip at the extremity of the colonel’s nasal appendage. However, as everybody was in good-humor, his facetiæ passed off without exciting ill-feeling, and all went as merry as a marriage-bell.
The dinner had disappeared, and the company sat tranquilly over the dessert. Tim, having resigned his post of honor, returned to his chair beside Miss Beamish, to whom he whispered a good deal, to the intense amusement of his brother-in-law, who declared that Tim Rooney had been hit at last.
“There’s many a true word said in jest, Mick,” retorted Tim. Miss Beamish hung down her head and tried to blush, and, failing in this, essayed a cough, which proved more successful.
“Oh! Tim is an old bachelor,” cried Mrs. Casey, “and a most determined one.”
“It’s never too late to mend, Mary.”
“You’ll never mend, Tim.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” ogling his fair neighbor, who again tried a cough, which, however, terminated in a hoarse gurgle.
Tim Rooney was possessor of twenty thousand pounds, all in the Bank of Ireland. His farm was valued at ten thousand, and his stock at five thousand more. He was Matilda’s godfather, and, as a matter of course, all these good things would revert to her in time. It was a standing joke at Merrion Street that Tim should get married without delay.
“Not a bit of it,” he would retort. “I’ll keep looking at them during the winter, and I’ll take another summer out of myself.”
His joking now on the subject of Miss Beamish was exquisite fun to the family of Casey, who enjoyed it only as family jokes can be enjoyed.
“You’ll ask me to the wedding, uncle?” said Matilda.
“Sure you’ll be a bridesmaid, Matty.”
“And you’ll have to give me a new dress, a real Parisian one; won’t he, Miss Beamish?”
Miss Beamish bashfully tittered.
“When is it to be, Tim?” asked Mr. Casey.
“Next Thursday, then,” he grinned.
“That’s mighty quick.”
“Delays is dangerous.”
“Right, Tim,” cried Casey. “If I hadn’t asked your sister on the Friday, Joe Mulligan, the tailor would have—”
“Papa, do see that Colonel Bowdler takes his wine,” almost shrieked Matilda.
O agony! he was about informing their patrician guests that his rival had been a—tailor!
“Well, see here, Mickey, and see here, Mary, and see here, Matty,” said Mr. Rooney, rising, “I’ll give ye all a toast.”
“Oh! toasts are vulgar; are they not, Colonel Bowdler?” interposed Matilda.
“Well, ahem! except upon special occasions they are not in vogue,” replied that gallant warrior.
“Well this is a special occasion, and a very special occasion”—Hear! hear! from the host—“and wan that calls for particular mention; an’ it’s health, long life, and happiness to Mrs. Tim Rooney that is for to be. Ye must all drink it on yer legs.”
Anything to humor Tim, now that the Bowdlers and Beamishes tolerated him. So with much laughing on the part of the gentlemen, and much giggling on the part of the ladies, the toast was drunk with all honor.
“And now, Mick, Mary and Matty,” cried Tim, “I may as well let the cat out of the bag. Me and Miss Tibie is to be married on Thursday.”
Had a bombshell fallen in their midst greater consternation could not have shown itself upon the countenances of the Casey family.
“Yer not in airnest, Tim,” said Casey, endeavoring to smile a sickly smile.
“Tim must have his joke,” observed Mrs. Casey, her face as white as a sheet.
“Uncle is so full of fun,” tittered Matilda, dire apprehension in every lineament.
“It’s no jest; is it, Tibie?” asked Tim of his fiancée.
“No, Timothy, I am proud to say it is not,” responded Miss Beamish, placing her hand in the arm of her lover.
“And to think I gave that Bowdler a hundred pounds for to lose us forty thousand,” groaned Casey, as, seated with his weeping wife and daughter, he grimly surveyed the wedding-cards of Mr. and Mrs. T. Rooney. “This comes of yer infernal tomfoolery wantin’ to get into society that wouldn’t touch ye with a forty-foot pole. Serve ye right.”
“Serve us right indeed!” echoed the two ladies.