• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1675 0

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Cursiter was disposed for further delay; but it shows the contrariety of human nature, that when he found himself superseded by his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, instead of feeling grateful to his preserver, he committed the imbecility of horse-whipping him; and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.

The most able and accustomed of dramatic critics would falter in the attempt to master the leading idea of one of Garry’s entertainments; so far as this performance made itself intelligible, it consisted of nightmare snatches of “Kenilworth,” subordinated to the exigencies of stage properties, chiefest among these being Sir Benjamin’s deputy-lieutenant’s uniform. The sword and cocked hat found their obvious wearer in the Earl of Leicester, and the white plume had been yielded to Kitty Gascogne, whose small crimson face grinned consciously beneath the limp feathers. Lady Dysart’s white bernouse was felt to confer an air of simplicity appropriate to the part of Amy Robsart, and its owner could not repress a groan as she realised that the heroine would inevitably be consigned to the grimy