• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1703 0

the visit to old Lady Eyrecourt, whose deaf sister had fallen to her share, and she did not echo her mother’s regret at missing Miss Mullen and her cousin. She threw down the handful of cards on the hall table again, and went with a tired step to look for Christopher in the smoking-room, where she found him with Captain Cursiter, the latter in the act of taking his departure. The manner of her greeting showed that he was an accustomed sight there, and, as a matter of fact, since Christopher’s return Captain Cursiter had found himself at Bruff very often. He had discovered that it was, as he expressed it, the only house in the country where the women let him alone. Lady Dysart had expressed the position from another point of view, when she had deplored to Mrs. Gascogne Pamela’s “hopeless friendliness” towards men, and Mrs. Gascogne had admitted that there might be something discouraging to a man in being treated as if he were a younger sister.

This unsuitable friendliness was candidly apparent in Pamela’s regret when she heard that Cursiter had come to Bruff with the news that his regiment was to leave Ireland for Aldershot in a fortnight.

“Here’s Captain Cursiter trying to stick me with the launch at an alarming reduction, as the property of an officer going abroad,” said Christopher. “He wants to take advantage of my grief, and he won’t stay and dine here and let me haggle the thing out comfortably.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t time to stay,” said Cursiter rather cheerlessly. “I’ve got to go up to Dublin tomorrow, and I’m very busy. I’ll come over again—if I may—when I get back.” He felt all the awkwardness of a self-conscious man in the prominence of making a farewell that he is beginning to find more unpleasant than he had expected.

“Oh, yes! indeed, you must come over again,” said Pamela, in the soft voice that was just Irish enough for Saxons of the more ignorant sort to fail to distinguish, save in degree, between it and Mrs. Lambert’s Dublin brogue.

It remained on Captain Cursiter’s ear as he stalked down through the shrubberies to the boat-house, and, as he steamed round Curragh Point, and caught the sweet, turfy whiff of the Irish air, he thought drearily of the arid glare of Aldershot, and, without any apparent connection of ideas, he wondered if the Dysarts were really coming to town next month.

Not long after his departure Lady Dysart rustled into the smoking-room in her solemnly sumptuous widow’s dress.

“Is he gone?” she breathed in a stage whisper, pausing on the threshold for a reply.

“No; he’s hiding behind the door,” answered Christopher; “he always does that when he hears you coming.” When Christopher was irritated, his method of showing it was generally so subtle as only to satisfy himself; it slipped through the wide and generous mesh of his mother’s understanding without the smallest friction.

“Nonsense, Christopher!” she said, not without a furtive glance behind the door. “What a visitation you have had from the whole set! Had they anything interesting to say for themselves? Charlotte Mullen generally is a great alleviation.”

“Oh yes,” replied her son, examining the end of his cigarette with a peculiar expression, “she—she alleviated about as much as usual; but it was Cursiter who brought the news.”

“I can’t imagine Captain Cursiter so far forgetting himself as to tell any news,” said Lady Dysart; “but perhaps he makes an exception in your favour.”

“They’re to go to Aldershot in a fortnight,” said Christopher.

“You don’t say so!” exclaimed his mother, with an irrepressible look at Pamela, who was sitting on the floor in the window, taking a thorn out of Max’s spatulate paw. “In a fortnight? I wonder how Mr. Hawkins will like that? Evelyn said that Miss Coppard told her the marriage was to come off when the regiment went back to England.”

Christopher grunted unsympathetically, and Pamela continued her researches for the thorn.

“Well,” resumed Lady Dysart, “I, for one, shall not regret them. Selfish and second-rate!”

“Which is which?” asked Christopher, eliminating any tinge of interest or encouragement