“Oh, hang it all, Cursiter! I know what you’re driving at well enough; but you’re wrong. You always think you’re the only man in the world who has any sense about women.”
“I didn’t think I had said anything about women,” returned the imperturbable Cursiter, secretly much amused at the sensitiveness of Mr. Hawkins’ conscience.
“Perhaps you didn’t; but you’re always thinking about them and imagining other people are doing the same,” retorted Hawkins; “and may I ask what my wanting leave has to say to the question?”
“You’re in a funk,” said Cursiter; “though mind you,” he added, “I don’t blame you for that.”
Mr. Hawkins debated with himself for an instant, and a confession as to the perturbed condition of that overworked organ, his heart, trembled on his lips. He even turned round to speak, but found something so discouraging to confidence in the spare, brown face, with its uncompromisingly bitten moustache and observant eyes, that the impulse was checked.
“Since you seem to know so much about me and the reasons why I want leave, and all the rest of it, I need say no more.”
Captain Cursiter laughed. “Oh! don’t on my account.”
Hawkins subsided into a dignified silence, which Cursiter, as was his wont, did not attempt to break. He fell into meditation on the drift of what had been said to him, and thought that he would write to Greer (Greer was the adjutant), and see about getting Hawkins away from Lismoyle; and he was doing so well here, he grumbled mentally, and getting so handy in the launch. If only this infernal Fitzpatrick girl would have stayed with her cads in Dublin everything would have been as right as rain. There was no other woman here that signified except Miss Dysart, and it didn’t seem likely she’d look at him, though you never could tell what a woman would or would not do.
Captain Cursiter was “getting on,” as captains go, and he was the less disposed to regard his junior’s love affairs with an indulgent eye, in that he had himself served a long and difficult apprenticeship in such matters, and did not feel that he had profited much by his experiences. It had happened to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into the house of bondage, and in it he had remained with eyes gradually opening to its drawbacks, until, a few years before, the death of the only apparent obstacle to his happiness had brought him face to face with its realisation. Strange to say, when this supreme moment arrived, Captain Cursiter was disposed for further delay; but it shows the contrariety of human nature, that when he found himself superseded by his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, instead of feeling grateful to his preserver, he committed the imbecility of horse-whipping him; and finding it subsequently advisable to leave his regiment, he exchanged into the infantry with a settled conviction that all women were liars.
The coach-house at Bruff, though not apparently adapted for theatrical purposes, had been for many years compelled to that use by Garry Dysart, and when, at half-past nine o’clock that night, Lady Dysart and her guests proceeded thither, they found that it had been arranged to the best possible advantage. The seats were few, and the carriages, ranging from an ancestral yellow chariot to Pamela’s pony-trap, were drawn up for the use of the rest of the audience. A dozen or so of the workmen and farm labourers lined the walls in respectful silence; and the servants of the household were divided between the outside car and the chariot. In front of a door leading to the harness-room, two clothes-horses, draped with tablecloths, a long ottoman, once part of the furniture of a pre-historic yacht of Sir Benjamin’s, two chairs, and a ladder, indicated the stage, and four stable-lanterns on the floor served as footlights. Lady Dysart, the Archdeacon, and Mrs. Gascogne sat in three chairs of honour; the landau was occupied by the rest of the party, with the exception of Francie and Hawkins, who had followed the others from the drawing-room at a little distance. When they appeared, the coach-box of the landau seemed their obvious destination; but at the same instant the wrangling voices of the actors in the harness-room ceased, the play began, and when Pamela next looked round neither Francie nor Mr. Hawkins was visible, and from the open window of an invalided brougham that had been pushed into the background, came sounds of laughter that sufficiently indicated their whereabouts.