The sigh of her heart was sincere,
When blushing she whisper'd her love,
A sound of delight in my ear;
Her voice was the voice of a dove.
Ah! who could from Phillida fly?
Yet I sought other nymphs of the vale,
Forgot her sweet blush and her sigh!
Forgot that I told her my tale.
In sorrow I wish'd to return,
And the tale of my passion renew;
Go, Shepherd, she answer'd with scorn,
False Shepherd, for ever adieu!
For thee no more tears will I shed,
From thee to fair Friendship I go;
The bird by a wound that has bled,
Is happy to fly from its foe.
"What can she find so affecting in those lines?" thought Colonel Desmond, as he marked Adelaide's changing countenance. Memory had raised the shades of departed joys, which appeared in her eyes not clad in their original brightness, but wrapped in sorrow's watery veil; reason quickly bade them be gone, but not ere her attentive observer had marked their shadowy footsteps as they crossed her brow. When she looked up, his penetrating glance read her mind, and expressed his own. She painfully felt her heart was open to his view, that there was now no retreat, and therefore calmly said to Melicent, "I agree with you, Miss Desmond, the feelings of Phillida are perfectly natural." "But," interrupted Colonel Desmond, in a tone and manner not to be mistaken, "don't you think, that though she might turn in scorn from the unworthy object of her first attachment, she might solace her wounded heart by admitting the love of another?" "Never!" replied Adelaide: "even in endeavouring to view him with indifference, her mind must have been too long filled with his idea, not to feel the impossibility of its ever being possessed by a second choice." Colonel Desmond knew the human heart better, and flattered himself, not unjustly, that if he had patience to play the friend, and did not too quickly assume the lover, he might imperceptibly win her regard in that character. He was not hurried away by the imprudent warmth of feeling, which would have deprived a younger man of his self-possession, but determined to destroy the impression of what the seriousness of his looks and tones had conveyed to her mind; and therefore with apparent carelessness, asked her how she liked Ireland. This question a stranger is plagued with in every company, from the day he lands in that country till the one he leaves it; which with its twin tormentor, "Do you like England or Ireland best?" serves to commence that sort of conversation, which begins in Great Britain with observations on the weather. By the way, it is strange that no moralist has ever remarked how providential it is, that the climate of this latter island is so variable, considering the propensity its inhabitants have to talk of it. It certainly affords a beautiful illustration of the doctrine of compensation.
But to return to our friend Desmond:—he was too well bred to have asked such an unfair question, had he not been completely distrait. When the mind is absent without leave, the deputy it leaves behind to secure its unmolested retreat most resembles that apish faculty, memory, and mechanically imitates the manners, and repeats the phrases of others. Adelaide, more embarrassed, though not so distrait as her interrogator, replied, that she was even more pleased with the country than she had expected to be from the favourable picture held forth in some late publications. He agreed to the justice of these representations; while his brother, happening to hear him, was nettled, to the quick, and abruptly said, "Not a bit like, Ned; quite too ridiculous." "But, my dear Harry, there is nothing in the world so tiresome as direct panegyric; you must allow a little for the malice of human nature, to make an individual or a national character loved, its virtues must be relieved by its foibles." "I'll tell you what, Ned, the devil a good there is in dressing us up in a fool's cap and bells, to make a set of fat English squires laugh who have eat themselves stupid." "How can you be so illiberal, brother? That des——"—"By the piper that danced before Moses," interrupted the elder Desmond; "it's themselves that's illiberal.—There's the two Webberlys, and that airified nephew of my wife's, mocking us all, by the Lord! and all the time of tea, and while Milly was playing on the forte, they were laughing as if their sides would burst. I'm bothered from the head to the tail with them, that's the truth of it. But come, Miss Wildenheim, a tune from you would save any man from being in a passion—give us 'God save the King,' and that will remind me that I ought to comport myself as becomes a peaceable subject."
In nothing did Adelaide excel more than in playing an air, in a manner that seemed to give it beauties that it was not before suspected of possessing. She called to her aid all the powers of harmony, and united boldness of execution with tenderness of expression. She now played "God save the King," in a manner that electrified the company; the card players had dispersed, and there was such a nodding of heads, and marching, and whistling, and singing, and drumming on tables, and rattling watch chains, and beating time, that the performance of a person who could not have brought forth all the power of the "forte," as Mr. Desmond called it, would have been lost amongst all these various noises. The tune was played and replayed, till Adelaide laughingly said her fingers ached; and then dancing was proposed, and being agreed to, the company repaired to a large hall for the purpose. Here Mr. Desmond vented the remnant of his spleen against the Webberlys, by calling to the piper, "Play up the humours of Ludgate Hill there!" with a significant wink to the music master, (who, by the by, was more of a wag than an Orpheus), and though the wink was of no use to the blind piper and fiddler, the tone of his voice was sufficiently understood by them to need no second order; and they accordingly struck up their favourite tune of "Jig Polthogue," to which Mr. Desmond amused himself by mimicking, in turn, the dancing of all the set; and his imitations, being general, offended nobody in particular, but in truth he even satirized with so much good humour, that he hardly ever gave offence. It seemed always to be the fashions of the times he quizzed, rather than the people who exhibited them. "What an entertaining, exhilarating people the Irish are!" said Adelaide to Colonel Desmond. "Yes," replied he; "but yet, with all their cleverness, how strangely inconsistent is their conduct! If Melicent Desmond was a sovereign princess, her father could not have had more pride about her than he has; and yet here she is associating with her music-master, dancing in the very set with him; and I never can persuade him there is any impropriety in it." "How well she does dance!" remarked his fair partner. "And what a capital caricature Captain Cormac and Miss Fitzcarril would make—he all flourishes, she as stiff as the genealogical tree that hangs up in the hall at Ballinamoyle. Do you observe," resumed he, "how much of the 'incedo regina' there is in her manner to him occasionally! This good lady is a singular being, I can assure you. She can be 'proud with meanness, and be mean with pride.'" "Such a character," rejoined Adelaide, "reminds me of Homer's princesses, who, from doing the honours of the palace, proceed to wash the clothes of its inhabitants in the neighbouring river, to which pleasant employment they drive right regally." Mr. Desmond now coming up to turn her in the dance, took that opportunity of saying, "I tried to touch you up, but I couldn't—it's a shame for you to bear away the bell in every thing:—I never saw any one in my life handle their feet as you do."
After two or three dances the company adjourned to the supper table, and here again all was mirth and glee. Colonel and Mr. Desmond sung comical songs, and told droll stories, till the whole party were in fits of laughter. Three of the children, younger than Melicent and Launcelot, were kept up to supper, and they sang catches and glees with their father and uncle, in a manner that surprised every body who heard their sweet voices and saw their childish faces. Before they began, a dispute arose between Mr. Desmond and the music-master, relative to the key note; the one sounded one, and the other another; when, to settle the matter, the former called to his second son, "Do you hear, George, take this note out in your mouth to the forte, strike it, and bring me word if I'm not right, and be sure you don't drop it by the way." How far George was an impartial testimony, or how much the note lost or gained in its ascent or descent, must ever remain in doubt; but, like a dutiful child, when he returned, he said, "You were right to be sure, father—listen here;" and sounding the octave above as clear as a bell, and as sweetly as possible, they all set to, the little performers keeping time and tune admirably; whilst the mellow base of the gentlemen, and the enchanting soprano of their sister, contrasted delightfully with the juvenile strains of these "young-eyed cherubim." Melicent's fine notes made most of the party express a wish to hear her in a solo, and she sang the "Exile of Erin," with a pathos that drew tears from many present. Adelaide seemed particularly to feel it; which Mr. Desmond perceiving, he said, "Come, Melicent, that's too dismal—I'll tune you up a lilt;" and he immediately sang, in a most comical manner, a ballad he had written himself, entitled, "Miss Jenny's lament for the loss of her petticoat;" in which was ably satirized the present style of undress. Soon after this the party separated with as much hilarity as they had met.
CHAPTER VII.
Jeunes beautés qui venez dans ces lieux,
Fouler d'un pied léger l'herbe tendre et fleurie,
Comme vous je connus les plaisirs de la vie,
Vos fêtes, vos transports, et vos aimables jeux.
L'Amour berçoit mon cœur de ses douces chimères,
Et l'Hymen me flattoit du destin le plus beau,
Un instant détruisit ces erreurs mensongères,
Que me reste-t-il? Le tombeau![6]
Levizac.