The Absentee (16 page)

'With such women, I should think a man's heart could be in no great
danger,' said Lord Colambre.

'There you might be mistaken, my lord; there's a way to every man's
heart, which no man in his own case is aware of, but which every woman
knows right well, and none better than these ladies—by his vanity.'

'True,' said Captain Bowles.

'I am not so vain as to think myself without vanity,' said Lord
Colambre; 'but love, I should imagine, is a stronger passion than
vanity.'

'You should imagine! Stay till you are tried, my lord. Excuse me,' said
Captain Bowles, laughing.

Lord Colambre felt the good sense of this, and determined to have
nothing to do with these dangerous ladies; indeed, though he had talked,
he had scarcely yet thought of them; for his imagination was intent upon
that packet from Miss Nugent, which Mrs. Petito said she had for him. He
heard nothing of it, or of her, for some days. He sent his servant every
day to Stephen's Green to inquire if Lady Dashfort had returned to town.
Her ladyship at last returned; but Mrs. Petito could not deliver the
parcel to any hand but Lord Colambre's own, and she would not stir
out, because her lady was indisposed. No longer able to restrain his
impatience, Lord Colambre went himself—knocked at Lady Dashfort's
door—inquired for Mrs. Petito—was shown into her parlour. The parcel
was delivered to him; but to his utter disappointment, it was a parcel
FOR, not FROM Miss Nugent. It contained merely an odd volume of some
book of Miss Nugent's which Mrs. Petito said she had put up along with
her things IN A MISTAKE, and she thought it her duty to return it by the
next opportunity of a safe conveyance.

Whilst Lord Colambre, to comfort himself for his disappointment, was
fixing his eyes upon Miss Nugent's name, written by her own hand, in
the first leaf of the book, the door opened, and the figure of an
interesting-looking woman, in deep mourning, appeared—appeared for one
moment, and retired.

'Only my Lord Colambre, about a parcel I was bringing for him from
England, my lady—my Lady Isabel, my lord,' said Mrs. Petito. Whilst
Mrs. Petito was saying this, the entrance and retreat had been made,
and made with such dignity, grace, and modesty; with such innocence,
dove-like eyes had been raised upon him, fixed and withdrawn; with such
a gracious bend the Lady Isabel had bowed to him as she retired; with
such a smile, and with so soft a voice, had repeated 'Lord Colambre!'
that his lordship, though well aware that all this was mere acting,
could not help saying to himself as he left the house:

'It is a pity it is only acting. There is certainly something very
engaging in this woman. It is a pity she is an actress. And so young! A
much younger woman than I expected. A widow before most women are wives.
So young, surely she cannot be such a fiend as they described her
to be!' A few nights afterwards Lord Colambre was with some of his
acquaintance at the theatre, when Lady Isabel and her mother came
into the box, where seats had been reserved for them, and where their
appearance instantly made that sensation which is usually created by
the entrance of persons of the first notoriety in the fashionable world.
Lord Colambre was not a man to be dazzled by fashion, or to mistake
notoriety for deference paid to merit, and for the admiration commanded
by beauty or talents. Lady Dashfort's coarse person, loud voice, daring
manners, and indelicate wit, disgusted him almost past endurance, He saw
Sir James Brooke in the box opposite to him; and twice determined to go
round to him. His lordship had crossed the benches, and once his hand
was upon the lock of the door; but attracted as much by the daughter as
repelled by the mother, he could move no farther. The mother's masculine
boldness heightened, by contrast, the charms of the daughter's soft
sentimentality. The Lady Isabel seemed to shrink from the indelicacy of
her mother's manners, and seemed peculiarly distressed by the strange
efforts Lady Dashfort made, from time to time, to drag her forward, and
to fix upon her the attention of gentlemen. Colonel Heathcock, who, as
Mrs. Petito had informed Lord Colambre, had come over with his regiment
to Ireland, was beckoned into their box by Lady Dashfort, by her
squeezed into a seat next to Lady Isabel; but Lady Isabel seemed to feel
sovereign contempt, properly repressed by politeness, for what, in a low
whisper to a female friend on the other side of her, she called, 'the
self-sufficient inanity of this sad coxcomb.' Other coxcombs, of a more
vivacious style, who stationed themselves round her mother, or to whom
her mother stretched from box to box to talk, seemed to engage no more
of Lady Isabel's attention than just what she was compelled to give by
Lady Dashfort's repeated calls of—

'Isabel! Isabel! Colonel G— Isabel! Lord D— bowing to you, Belie!
Belie! Sir Harry B— Isabel, child, with your eyes on the stage? Did you
never see a play before? Novice! Major P—waiting to catch your eye this
quarter of an hour; and now her eyes gone down to her play-bill! Sir
Harry, do take it from her.

'Were eyes so radiant only made to read?'

Lady Isabel appeared to suffer so exquisitely and so naturally from this
persecution, that Lord Colambre said to himself—

'If this be acting, it is the best acting I ever saw. If this be art, it
deserves to be nature.'

And with this sentiment he did himself the honour of handing Lady
Isabel to her carriage this night, and with this sentiment he awoke next
morning; and by the time he had dressed and breakfasted he determined
that it was impossible all that he had seen could be acting. 'No
woman, no young woman, could have such art. Sir James Brooke had been
unwarrantably severe; he would go and tell him so.'

But Sir James Brooke this day received orders for his regiment to march
to quarters in a distant part of Ireland. His head was full of arms,
and ammunition, and knapsacks, and billets, and routes; and there was no
possibility, even in the present chivalrous disposition of our hero, to
enter upon the defence of the Lady Isabel. Indeed, in the regret he
felt for the approaching and unexpected departure of his friend, Lord
Colambre forgot the fair lady. But just when Sir James had his foot in
the stirrup, he stopped.

'By the bye, my dear lord, I saw you at the play last night. You seemed
to be much interested. Don't think me impertinent, if I remind you of
our conversation when we were riding home from Tusculum; and if I warn
you,' said he, mounting his horse, 'to beware of counterfeits—for such
are abroad.' Reining in his impatient steed, Sir James turned again and
added, 'DEEDS NOT WORDS, is my motto. Remember, we can judge better
by the conduct of people towards others than by their manner towards
ourselves.'

Our hero was quite convinced of the good sense of his friend's last
remark, that it is safer to judge of people by their conduct to others
than by their manners towards ourselves; but as yet, he felt scarcely
any interest on the subject of Lady Dashfort or Lady Isabel's
characters; however, he inquired and listened to all the evidence he
could obtain respecting this mother and daughter.

He heard terrible reports of the mischief they had done in families;
the extravagance into which they had led men; the imprudence, to say
no worse, into which they had betrayed women. Matches broken off,
reputations ruined, husbands alienated from their wives, and wives made
jealous of their husbands. But in some of these stories he discovered
exaggeration so flagrant as to make him doubt the whole; in others, it
could not be positively determined whether the mother or daughter had
been the person most to blame.

Lord Colambre always followed the charitable rule of believing only half
what the world says, and here he thought it fair to believe which half
he pleased. He further observed, that, though all joined in abusing
these ladies in their absence, when present they seemed universally
admired. Though everybody cried 'Shame!' and 'shocking!' yet everybody
visited them. No parties so crowded as Lady Dashfort's; no party deemed
pleasant or fashionable where Lady Dashfort or Lady Isabel was not. The
bon-mots of the mother were everywhere repeated; the dress and air of
the daughter everywhere imitated. Yet Lord Colambre could not help being
surprised at their popularity in Dublin, because, independently of all
moral objections, there were causes of a different sort, sufficient, he
thought, to prevent Lady Dashfort from being liked by the Irish; indeed
by any society. She in general affected to be ill-bred, and inattentive
to the feelings and opinions of others; careless whom she offended by
her wit or by her decided tone. There are some persons in so high a
region of fashion, that they imagine themselves above the thunder of
vulgar censure. Lady Dashfort felt herself in this exalted situation,
and fancied she might 'hear the innocuous thunder roll below.' Her rank
was so high that none could dare to call her vulgar; what would
have been gross in any one of meaner note, in her was freedom, or
originality, or Lady Dashfort's way. It was Lady Dashfort's pleasure and
pride to show her power in perverting the public taste. She often said
to those English companions with whom she was intimate, 'Now see what
follies I can lead these fools into. Hear the nonsense I can make them
repeat as wit.' Upon some occasion, one of her friends VENTURED to fear
that something she had said was TOO STRONG. 'Too strong, was it? Well, I
like to be strong—woe be to the weak.' On another occasion she was told
that certain visitors had seen her ladyship yawning. 'Yawn, did I?—glad
of it—the yawn sent them away, or I should have snored;—rude, was I?
they won't complain. To say I was rude to them would be to say, that I
did not think it worth my while to be otherwise. Barbarians! are not we
the civilised English, come to teach them manners and fashions? Whoever
does not conform, and swear allegiance too, we shall keep out of the
English pale.'

Lady Dashfort forced her way, and she set the fashion: fashion, which
converts the ugliest dress into what is beautiful and charming, governs
the public mode in morals and in manners; and thus, when great talents
and high rank combine, they can debase or elevate the public taste.

With Lord Colambre she played more artfully; she drew him out in defence
of his beloved country, and gave him opportunities of appearing to
advantage; this he could not help feeling, especially when the Lady
Isabel was present. Lady Dashfort had dealt long enough with human
nature to know, that to make any man pleased with her, she should begin
by making him pleased with himself.

Insensibly the antipathy that Lord Colambre had originally felt to
Lady Dashfort wore off; her faults, he began to think, were assumed; he
pardoned her defiance of good breeding, when he observed that she could,
when she chose it, be most engagingly polite. It was not that she did
not know what was right, but that she did not think it always for her
interest to practise it.

The party opposed to Lady Dashfort affirmed that her wit depended
merely on unexpectedness; a characteristic which may be applied to any
impropriety of speech, manner, or conduct. In some of her ladyship's
repartees, however, Lord Colambre now acknowledged there was more than
unexpectedness; there was real wit; but it was of a sort utterly unfit
for a woman, and he was sorry that Lady Isabel should hear it. In short,
exceptionable as it was altogether, Lady Dashfort's conversation had
become entertaining to him; and though he could never esteem or feel
in the least interested about her, he began to allow that she could be
agreeable.

'Ay, I knew how it would be,' said she, when some of her friends told
her this. 'He began by detesting me, and did I not tell you that, if I
thought it worth my while to make him like me, he must, sooner or later.
I delight in seeing people begin with me as they do with olives, making
all manner of horrid faces and silly protestations that they will never
touch an olive again as long as they live; but, after a little time,
these very folk grow so desperately fond of olives, that there is no
dessert without them. Isabel, child, you are in the sweet line—but
sweets cloy. You never heard of anybody living on marmalade, did
ye?'—Lady Isabel answered by a sweet smile.—'To do you justice, you
play Lydia Languish vastly well,' pursued the mother; 'but Lydia, by
herself, would soon tire; somebody must keep up the spirit and bustle,
and carry on the plot of the piece; and I am that somebody—as you shall
see. Is not that our hero's voice, which I hear on the stairs?'

It was Lord Colambre. His lordship had by this time become a constant
visitor at Lady Dashfort's. Not that he had forgotten, or that he meant
to disregard his friend Sir James Brooke's parting words. He promised
himself faithfully, that if anything should occur to give him reason to
suspect designs, such as those to which the warning pointed, he would be
on his guard, and would prove his generalship by an able retreat. But to
imagine attacks where none were attempted, to suspect ambuscades in the
open country, would be ridiculous and cowardly.

'No,' thought our hero; 'Heaven forfend I should be such a coxcomb as to
fancy every woman who speaks to me has designs upon my precious heart,
or on my more precious estate!' As he walked from his hotel to Lady
Dashfort's house, ingeniously wrong, he came to this conclusion, just as
he ascended the stairs, and just as her ladyship had settled her future
plan of operations.

After talking over the nothings of the day, and after having given two
or three CUTS at the society of Dublin, with two or three compliments
to individuals, who, she knew, were favourites with his lordship, she
suddenly turned to him—

'My lord, I think you told me, or my own sagacity discovered, that you
want to see something of Ireland, and that you don't intend, like most
travellers, to turn round, see nothing, and go home content.'