Satanella: A Story of Punchestown

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

Like others who follow "will-o'-the-wisps," St. Josephs was getting deeper into the mire at every step. Day by day this dark bewitching woman occupied more of his thoughts, wound herself tighter round his weary heart. Now for the first time since she died he could bear to recall the memory of the blue-eyed girl he was to have married long ago. Now he felt truly thankful to have baffled the widow at Simla, and behaved like "a monster," as she said, to the foreign countess who used to ride with him in the Park.

Hitherto he was persuaded his best affections had been thrown away, all the nobility of his character wasted and misunderstood. At last he had found the four-leaved shamrock. He cared not how low he stooped to pluck it, so he might wear it in his breast.

For one of his age and standing, such an attachment has its ridiculous as well as its pitiful side. He laughed grimly in his grizzled moustache to find how particular he was growing about the freshness of his gloves and the fit of his coat. When he rode he lengthened his stirrups, and brought his horse more on its haunches. He even adopted the indispensable flower in his button-hole; but could never keep it there, because of his large circle of child-friends, to whom he denied nothing, and who regularly despoiled him of any possession that took their fancy. There was one little gipsy, a flirt, three years of age, who could and would, have coaxed him out of a keepsake even from Miss Douglas herself.

Nobody, I suppose, is insane enough to imagine a man feels happier for being in love. There were moments when St. Josephs positively hated himself, and everybody else. Moments of vexation, longing, and a bitter sense of ill-usage, akin to rage, but for the leavening of sadness, that toned it down to grief. He knew from theory and practice how to manage a woman, just as he knew how to bridle and ride a horse. Alas! that each bends only to the careless ease of conscious mastery. He could have controlled the Satanella on four legs almost as well as reckless Daisy. He had no influence whatever over her namesake on two.

Most of us possess the faculty of looking on those affairs in which we are deeply interested, from the outside, as it were, and with the eyes of an unbiassed spectator. Such impartial perception, however, while it increases our self-reproach, seems in no way to affect our conduct. General St. Josephs cursed himself for an old fool twenty times a day, but none the more for that did he strive or wish to put from him the folly he deplored.

It was provoking, degrading, to know that, in presence of Miss Douglas he appeared at his very worst; that when he rode out with her, he was either idiotically simple, or morosely preoccupied; that when he called at her house, he could neither find topics for conversation, nor excuses to go away; that in every society, others, whom he rated as his inferiors, must have seemed infinitely pleasanter, wiser, better informed, and more agreeable: and that he, professedly a man of experience, and a man of the world, lost his head, like a raw boy, at the first word she addressed him, without succeeding in convincing her that he had lost his heart. Then he vowed to rebel—to wean himself by degrees—to break the whole thing off at once—to go out of town, leaving no address—to assert his independence, show he could live without her, and never see her again! But when she asked him to take her to the play, he said he should be delighted, and was!

Among the many strange functions of society, few seem more unaccountable than its tendency to select a theatre as the rendezvous of sincere affection. Of all places, there is none, I should imagine, where people are more en evidence—particularly in the stalls, a part of the house specially affected, it would seem, as affording no protection to front or rear. Every gesture is marked, every whisper overheard, and even if you might speak aloud, which you mustn't, during the performances, you could hardly impart to a lady tender truths or falsehoods, as the case may be, while surrounded by a mob of people who have paid money with the view of keeping eyes and ears wide open till they obtain its worth.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all these drawbacks to confidential communication, no sooner does a fair angler of the present day feel that, in fisherman's language, she "has got a bite," than straightway she carries her prey off to a minor theatre, where by some inexplicable method of her own, she proceeds to secure the gudgeon on its hook.