He turned once more to his desk, and to the letter. Somehow he could make nothing of it. All the dangers that he desired to avoid so cramped his ingenuity that he could say little beyond platitudes; and he thought with terror of her who was to read them. The scornful contempt with which she would treat such a letter was all before him, and he snatched up the paper and tore it in pieces.
‘It must not be done by writing,’ cried he at last. ‘Who is to guess for which of the fifty moods of such a woman a man’s letter is to be composed? What you could say now you dared not have written half an hour ago. What would have gone far to gain her love yesterday, to-day will show you the door! It is only by consummate address and skill she can be approached at all, and without her look and bearing, the inflections of her voice, her gestures, her “pose,” to guide you, it would be utter rashness to risk her humour.’
He suddenly bethought him at this moment that he had many things to do in Ireland ere he left England. He had tradesmen’s bills to settle, and ‘traps’ to be got rid of. ‘Traps’ included furniture, and books, and horses, and horse-gear: details which at first he had hoped his friend Lockwood would have taken off his hands; but Lockwood had only written him word that a Jew broker from Liverpool would give him forty pounds for his house effects, and as for ‘the screws,’ there was nothing but an auction.
Most of us have known at some period or other of our lives what it is to suffer from the painful disparagement our chattels undergo when they become objects of sale; but no adverse criticism of your bed or your bookcase, your ottoman or your arm-chair, can approach the sense of pain inflicted by the impertinent comments on your horse. Every imputed blemish is a distinct personality, and you reject the insinuated spavin, or the suggested splint, as imputations on your honour as a gentleman. In fact, you are pushed into the pleasant dilemma of either being ignorant as to the defects of your beast, or wilfully bent on an act of palpable dishonesty. When we remember that every confession a man makes of his unacquaintance with matters ‘horsy’ is, in English acceptance, a count in the indictment against his claim to be thought a gentleman, it is not surprising that there will be men more ready to hazard their characters than their connoisseurship. ‘I’ll go over myself to Ireland,’ said he at last; ‘and a week will do everything.’
CHAPTER LXVIII
THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE
Lockwood was seated at his fireside in his quarters, the Upper Castle Yard, when Walpole burst in upon him unexpectedly. ‘What! you here?’ cried the major. ‘Have you the courage to face Ireland again?’
‘I see nothing that should prevent my coming here. Ireland certainly cannot pretend to lay a grievance to my charge.’
‘Maybe not. I don’t understand these things. I only know what people say in the clubs and laugh over at dinner-tables.’