And in some such fashion Considine lived on, in moderate comfort and prosperity, with the shadow of possible ruin in the back-ground; always felt, but not so strongly that he must disturb the daily furniture of his life by an effort to exorcise the demon; which is a state of things not so very different from what the rest of us endure. We have our threatening shadows too, loss, disease, madness, not so very far off, and always the dismal shade of Death himself looming up behind and dwarfing all the others; yet, like the people before the flood, we manage pretty well to comfort and amuse ourselves in the present.
Considine solaced himself not unsuccessfully under his cares. He had naturally much of the wise vegetable enjoyment of existence, and things conducing thereto, eating, smoking and gentle exercise, which is natural to the country bred more than to those brought up in cities. He had 'Change through the day to gossip and lounge upon, and his club in the evening. He had opportunities too of going into society, even if he did not make the most of them, and very frequently he would spend an hour in the Misses Stanley's drawing-room, sipping tea and talking over the news. He had fallen into the way of spending the hot months at St. Euphrase, just as those ladies spent the cold ones in the city. Their migrations agreed pretty closely in time, and both he and they, owing to years and circumstances, being somewhat out of the swim of busy life, found it pleasant to sit together on the banks, as it were, and watch the gambols and antics of those younger and brisker, who disported themselves in mid-current.
The ladies had come to town the first winter solely for their niece's education, but the following year they undoubtedly had their own solacement quite as much in view as her improvement. The tranquillity and repose of their rural life was if anything too complete, and after having once broken it by wintering in the city, it would have felt like returning to bed after lunch to have remained in the country all the following year. There is a feeling of companionship to be derived even from the faces of our fellows as they pass us in the street, which is pleasant to such as have been leading secluded lives, and it takes months for this mild excitement to lose its relish; but it will grow tame eventually, and so, too, will the morning calls among ladies of a certain age. Humanity being in two forms, which combine with and supplement each other to constitute the perfect whole, a social circle composed of one kind alone must needs be incomplete, tending to limpness if it be feminine, to hardness if all of men.
The day for flirtation and matrimonial intentions may be over, but still the habits and tastes formed in that brighter time survive, even when incorrigible celibacy has caused society to pass by the offenders as hopeless subjects. Fortune, by endowing a young lady with competence, grants her the privilege to be unworldly or critical, so that she lets her precious springtime pass unused. The privilege is by no means an unalloyed boon as the years go by. She finds herself inadmissible to the conclaves of matrons of her own age, where husbands, doctors and children are discussed with freedom; yet her god-daughters and nieces can scarcely be expected to accept her as a compeer; she is a demoiselle passée, an outside hoverer on the confines of social life, with the gay bachelors of earlier decades who are still unwed, and whom society passes by as obdurate and hopelessly unavailable for matrimonial use.
It is pitiful to see these disappointed "have-beens," with their relish for youthful pleasures still unslaked, flitting in a disregarded twilight, like Homer's ghosts, while the reviving blood of the sacrificial bull is quaffed by other lips. Well for them, is it not, if they can make up a little party among themselves, and by keeping each other in countenance, contrive to ruffle it without ridicule among the younger revellers?
And so, from mutual convenience and sympathy, Considine and the Misses Stanley became fast comrades. In their drawing-room he could drink a cup of tea with the ladies whenever he had a mind, and they were sure of an escort for the evening when they so desired.
CHAPTER IV.
[BETSEY EX FÊTE].
In spite of her pretence to make little of an invitation to a juvenile party, the prospect of that gaiety took strong possession of Betsey Bunce. Mr. Selby's lameness had prevented his taking her anywhere or affording her opportunity to spread her plumage among strangers; which, indeed, was all the satisfaction which could have accrued from going out with him, she not being musical, and he very little else. Betsey's dissipations, therefore, had been of so meagre a kind that she might well set store by Mrs. Jordan's invitation; it would at least, she told herself, be an opportunity to show people that she was fit for better things. Her cousin Muriel had told her she might expect to meet a hundred guests or more, and surely they would not all be children, though poor Muriel was too young perhaps to know; but, at least, both her Montreal beaux, as she choose to denominate Randolph Jordan and Gerald Herkimer, would be there. So she made no doubt of having a "good time." The image of Joe Webb rose before her mind's eye as that idea occurred to her, and he seemed to her to look reproachful. "Poor Joe!" she sighed to herself, glancing archly in her glass; but Joe was fifteen miles away, and Betsey fancied herself a heart-breaker. "A girl can't help these things," her thoughts ran on; "and Joe has never said a word--though I can tell by the sinking of his voice when he speaks to me, he would say plenty if I just gave him encouragement. Poor Joe! he's too modest. The beaux won't need encouragement! I guess I shall rather have to make them stand off a bit--at first, that is, they ain't going to think they are to have it all their own way with an Upper Canadian, even if she has moved down to St. Euphrase. Nice fellows both; but such awful dudes! When they walk down the street of St. Euphrase in their cricketing suits, the sidewalk don't seem broad enough to give them both room. And my! don't the habitants stare at them? I kind of like a dude, or I almost think I could bring myself to like one," and as she glanced in the glass again, she coloured half shyly before the intelligence in her own eyes. "Their gloves and their boots do fit so splendid! Their necks look tight like in the stiff collars, but their tongues wag freely enough--too freely sometimes, at St. Euphrase. They're real 'sassy' sometimes. But at a large party, no doubt they'll know enough to behave. No! Dudes ain't half bad. But these two hai'nt got the fine manly shoulders and strong arms of Joe Webb."
"Ah, how big he is! And how safe a girl would be with him to take care of her! To see him gather up the reins behind that young team of his in one hand, when they grow fractious, and lash them with the other till they simmer down like lambs! Poor Joe!" and she took another look at her all conquering charms in the glass.