The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 2
“I never thought you ‘d marry, Mr. Dempsey,” said Mrs. Fum, with a languishing look, that contrasted strangely with the habitually shrewish expression of the “Pauther’s” face.
“Can’t help it, Mrs. Fum. The last of the Romans! No more Dempseys when I ‘m gone, if I don’t. Elder branch all dropped off, – last twig of the younger myself.”
“Ah! these are considerations, indeed!” sighed the lady. “But don’t you think that a person more like yourself in taste – more similar in opinion of the world? She looks proud, Mr. Dempsey; I should say, overbearingly proud.”
“Rather proud myself, if that’s all,” said Dempsey, drawing himself up, and protruding his chin with a most comic imitation of dignity.
“Only becomingly so, Mr. Dempsey, – a proper sense of self-respect, a due feeling for your future position in life, – I never saw more than that, I must say. Now, I could n’t help remarking the way that young lady threw herself into the chair, and the glance she gave at the room. It was number eight, Mr. Dempsey, with the chintz furniture, and the looking-glass over the chimney! Well, really you ‘d say, it was poor Leonard’s room, with the settee bed in the corner, – the look she gave it!”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Dempsey, who really felt horrified at this undervaluing judgment of what every boarder regarded as the very sanctum of the Fumbally Temple.
“Truth, every word of it!” resumed Mrs. Fum. “I thought my ears deceived me, as she said to her mother, ‘Oh, it ‘s all very neat and clean!’ – neat and clean, Mr. Dempsey! The elegant rug which I worked myself – the pointer – and the wild duck.”
“Like life, by Jove, if it was n’t that the dog has only three legs.”
“Perspective, Mr. Dempsey, don’t forget its perspective; and if the bird’s wings are maroon, I could n’t help it, it was the only color to be had in the town.”
“The group is fine, – devilish fine!” said Paul, with the air of one whose word was final.
“‘Neat and clean’ were the expressions she used. I could have cried as I heard it.” Here the lady, probably in consideration for the omission, wiped her eyes, and dropped her voice to a very sympathetic key. “She meant it well, depend upon it, Mrs. Fum, she meant it well.”
“And the old lady,” resumed Mrs. Fumbally, deaf to every consolation, “lay back in her chair this way, and said, ‘Oh, it will all do very well, – you ‘ll not find us troublesome, Mrs. Flumary!’ I haven’t been the head of this establishment eight-and-twenty years to be called Flumary. How these airs are to be tolerated by the other boarders, I’m sure is more than I can say.”
It appeared more than Mr. Dempsey could say also, if one might pronounce from the woe-begone expression of his face; for, up to this moment totally wrapped up in the mysterious portion of the affair, he had lost sight of all the conflicting interests this sudden advent would call into activity.
“That wasn’t all,” continued Mrs. Fumbally; “for when I told them the dinner-hour was five, the old lady interrupted me with, ‘For the present, with your permission, we should prefer dining at six.’ Did any one ever hear the like? I ‘ll have a pretty rebellion in the house, when it gets out! Mrs. Mackay will have her tea upstairs every night; Mr. Dunlop will always breakfast in bed. I would n’t be surprised if Miss Boyle stood out for broth in the middle of the day.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Paul, holding up both hands in horror.
“I vow and protest, I expect that next!” exclaimed Mrs. Fum, as folding her arms, and fixing her eyes rigidly on the grate, she sat, the ideal of abused and injured benevolence. “Indeed, Mr. Dempsey,” said she, after a long silence on both sides, “it would be a great breach of the regard many years of intimacy with you has formed, if I did not say, that your affections are misplaced. Beauty is a perishable gift.”
Paul looked at Mrs. Fumbally, and seemed struck with the truth of her remark.
“But the qualities of the miud, Mr. Dempsey, those rare endowments that make happy the home and hearth. You ‘re fond of beef hash with pickled onions,” said she, smiling sweetly; “well, you shall have one to-day.”
“Good creature!” muttered Paul, while he pressed her hand affectionately. “The best heart in the world!”
“Ah, yes,” sighed the lady, half soliloquizing, “conformity of temper, – the pliancy of the reed, – the tender attachment of the ivy.”
Paul coughed, and drew himself up proudly, and, as if a sudden thought occurred to him that he resembled the oak of the forest, he planted his feet firmly, and stood stiff and erect.
“You are not half careful enough about yourself, Mr. Dempsey, – never attend to changing your damp clothes, – and I assure you the climate here requires it; and when you come in cold and wet, you should always step in here, on your way upstairs, and take a little something warm and cordial. I don’t know if you approve of this,” suiting the action to the words. Mrs. Fum had opened a small cupboard in the wall, and taken out a quaint-looking flask, and a very diminutive glass.
“Nectar, by Jove, – downright nectar!”
“Made with some white currants and ginger,” chimed in Mrs. Fum, simply, as if to imply, “See what skill can effect; behold the magic power of intelligence!”
“White currants and ginger!” echoed Paul, holding out the glass to be refilled.
“A trifle of spirits, of course.”
“Of course! could n’t be comforting without it.”
“That’s what poor dear Fumbally always called, ‘Ye know, ye know!’ It was his droll way of saying ‘Noyau!’” Here Mrs. F. displayed a conflict of smiles and tears, a perfect April landscape on her features. “He had such spirits!”
“I don’t wonder, if he primed himself with this often,” said Dempsey, who at last relinquished his glass, but with evident unwillingness.
“He used to say that his was a happy home!” sobbed Mrs. Fum, while she pressed her handkerchief to her face.
Paul did not well know what he should say, or if, indeed, he was called upon to utter a sentiment at all; but he thought he could have drunk another glass to the late Fum’s memory, if his widow had n’t kept such a tight grip of the flask.
“Oh, Mr. Dempsey, who could have thought it would come to this?” The sorrowful drooping of her eyelids, as she spoke, seemed to intimate an allusion to the low state of the decanter, and Dempsey at once replied, —
“There’s a very honest glass in it still.”
“Kind – kind creature!” sobbed Mrs. Fum, as she poured out the last of the liquor. And Paul was sorely puzzled, whether the encomium applied to the defunct or himself. “Do you know, Mr. Dempsey,” here she gave a kind of hysterical giggle, that might take any turn, – hilarious, or the reverse, as events should dictate, – “do you know that as I see you there, standing before the fire, looking so pleasant and cheerful, so much at home, as a body might say, I can’t help fancying a great resemblance between you and my poor dear Fum. He was older than you,” said she, rapidly, as a slight cloud passed over Paul’s features; – “older and stouter, but he had the same jocose smile, the same merry voice, and even that little fidgety habit with the hands. I know you ‘ll forgive me, – even that was his.”
This was in all probability strictly correct, inasmuch as for several years before his demise the gifted individual had labored under a perpetual “delirium tremens.”
“He rather liked this kind of thing,” said Paul, pantomiming the action of drinking with his now empty glass.
“In moderation, – only in moderation.”
“I ‘ve heard that it disagreed with him,” rejoined Paul, who, not pleased with his counterpart, resolved on showing a knowledge of his habits.
“So it did,” sighed Mrs. Fum; “and he gave it up in consequence.”
“I heard that, too,” said Paul; and then muttered to himself, “on the morning he died.”
A gentle tap at the door now broke in upon the colloquy, and a very slatternly servant woman, with bare legs and feet, made her appearance.
“What d’ye want, Biddy?” asked her mistress, in an angry voice. “I ‘m just settling accounts with Mr. Dempsey, and you bounce in as if the house was on fire.”
“It ‘s just himsel ‘s wanted,” replied the northern maiden; “the leddie canna get on ava without him, he maun come up to number ‘eight,’ as soon as he can.”
“I ‘m ready,” quoth Paul, as he turned to arrange his cravat, and run his hand through his hair; “I ‘m at their service.”
“Remember, Mr. Dempsey, remember, that what I’ve spoken to you this day is in the strictest confidence. If matters have proceeded far with the young lady upstairs, if your heart, if hers be really engaged, forget everything, – forget me.”
Mrs. Fumbally’s emotion had so overpowered her towards the end of her speech, that she rushed into an adjoining closet and clapped-to the door, an obstacle that only acted as a sound-board to her sobs, and from which Paul hastened with equal rapidity to escape.
An entire hemisphere might have separated the small chamber where Mr. Dempsey’s late interview took place from the apartment on the first floor, to which he now was summoned, and so, to do him justice, did Paul himself feel; and not all the stimulating properties of that pleasant cordial could allay certain tremors of the heart, as he turned the handle of the door.
Lady Eleanor was seated at a writing-table, and Helen beside her, working, as Mr. Dempsey entered, and, after a variety of salutations, took a chair, about the middle of the room, depositing his hat and umbrella beside him.
“It would seem, Mr. Dempsey,” said Lady Eleanor, with a very benign smile, “it would seem that we have made a very silly mistake; one, I am bound to say, you are quite exonerated from any share in, and the confession of which will, doubtless, exhibit my own and my daughter’s cleverness in a very questionable light before you. Do you know, Mr. Dempsey, we believed this to be an inn.”
“An inn!” broke in Paul, with uplifted hands.
“Yes, and it was only by mere accident we have discovered our error, and that we are actually in a boarding-house. Pray now, Helen, do not laugh, the blunder is quite provoking enough already.”
Why Miss Darcy should laugh, and what there could be to warrant the use of the epithet, “provoking,” Paul might have been broken on the wheel without being able to guess, while Lady Eleanor went on, —
“Now, it would seem customary for the guests to adopt here certain hours in common, – breakfasting, dining together, and associating like the members of one family.”
Paul nodded an assent, and she resumed.
“I need scarcely observe to you, Mr. Dempsey, how very unsuited either myself or Miss Darcy would be to such an assembly, if even present circumstances did not more than ever enjoin a life of strict retirement.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Paul in a tone of deprecation, “there never was anything more select than this. Mother Fum never admits without a reference; I can show you the advertisement in the Derry papers. We kept the Collector out for two months, till he brought us a regular bill of health, as a body might say.”
“Could you persuade them to let us remain in ‘Quarantine,’ then, for a few days?” said Helen, smiling.
“Oh, no! Helen, nothing of the kind; Mr. Dempsey must not be put to any troublesome negotiations, on our account. There surely must be an hotel of some sort in the town.”
“This is a nice mess!” muttered Paul, who began to anticipate some of the miseries his good nature might cost him.
“A few days, a week at furthest, I hope, will enable us to communicate with our law adviser, and decide upon some more suitable abode. Could you, then, for the meanwhile, suggest a comfortable inn, or if not, a lodging in the town?”
Paul wrung his hands in dismay, but uttered not a syllable.
“To be candid, Mr. Dempsey,” said Helen, “my father has a horror of these kind of places, and you could recommend us no country inn, however humble, where he would not be better pleased to hear of our taking refuge.”
“But, Fumbally’s! the best-known boarding-house in the North.”
“I should be sincerely grieved, to be understood as uttering one syllable in its disparagement,” rejoined Lady Eleanor; “I could not ask for a more satisfactory voucher of its respectability; but ours are peculiar circumstances.”
“Only a pound a week,” struck in Paul, “with extras.”
“Nothing could be more reasonable; but pray understand me, I speak of course in great ignorance, but it would appear to me that persons living together in this fashion have a kind of right to know something of those who present themselves for the first time amongst them. Now, there are many reasons why neither my daughter nor myself would like to submit to this species of inquiry.”
“I ‘ll settle all that,” broke in Paul; “leave that to me, and you ‘ll have no further trouble about it.”
“You must excuse my reliance even on such discretion,” said Lady Eleanor, with more hauteur than before.
“Are we to understand that there is neither inn nor lodging-house to be found?” said Helen.
“Plenty of both, but full of bagmen,” ejaculated Paul, whose contrivances were all breaking down beneath him.
“What is to be done?” exclaimed Lady Eleanor to her daughter.
“Lord bless you!” cried Paul, in a whining voice, “if you only come down amongst them with that great frill round your neck you wore the first day I saw you at ‘The Corvy,’ you ‘ll scare them so, they ‘ll never have courage to utter a word. There was Miss Daly – when she was here – ”
“Miss Daly, – Miss Maria Daly!” exclaimed both ladies together.
“Miss Maria Daly,” repeated Dempsey, with an undue emphasis on every syllable. “She spent the summer with us on the coast.”
“Where had she resided up to that time, may I ask?” said Lady Eleanor, hastily.
“At ‘The Corvy’ – always at ‘The Corvy,’ until your arrival.”
“Oh, Helen, think of this!” whispered Lady Eleanor, in a voice tremulous with agitation. “Think what sacrifices we have exacted from our friends, – and now, to learn that while we stand hesitating about encountering the inconveniences of our lot, that we have been subjecting another to that very same difficulty from which we shrink.” Then, turning to Mr. Dempsey, she added, —
“I need not observe, sir, that while I desire no mystery to be thrown around our arrival here, I will not be the less grateful for any restraint the good company may impose on themselves as to inquiries concerning us. We are really not worth the attention, and I should be sorry to impose upon kind credulity by any imaginary claim to distinction.”
“You’ll dine below, then?” asked Paul, far more eager to ascertain this fact than any reasons that induced it.
Lady Eleanor bowed; and Dempsey, with a face beaming with delight, arose to withdraw and communicate the happy news to Mrs. Fumbally.
CHAPTER XXII. A GLANCE AT MRS. FUMBALLY’S
Great as Lady Eleanor’s objection was to subjecting herself or her daughter to the contact of a boarding-house party, when the resolve was once taken the matter cost her far less thought or anxiety than it occasioned to the other inmates of the “Establishment.” It is only in such segments of the great world that curiosity reaches its true intensity, and the desire to know every circumstance of one’s neighbor becomes an absorbing passion. A distrustful impression that nobody is playing on “the square “ – that every one has some special cause of concealment, some hidden shame – seems the presiding tone of these places.
Mrs. Fumbally’s was no exception to the rule, and now that the residents had been so long acquainted that the personal character and fortune of each was known to all, the announcement of a new arrival caused the most lively sensations of anxiety.
Directories were ransacked for the name of Gwynne, and every separate owner of the appellation canvassed and discussed. Army lists were interrogated and conned over. Dempsey himself was examined for two hours before a “Committee of the whole house;” and though his inventive powers were no mean gifts, certain discrepancies, certain unexplained difficulties, did not fail to strike the acute tribunal, and he was dismissed as unworthy of credit. Baffled, not beaten, each retired to dress for dinner, – a ceremony, be it remarked, only in use on great occasions, – fully impressed with the conviction that the Gwynne case was a legitimate object of search and discovery.
It is not necessary here to allude to the strange display of costume that day called forth, nor what singular extravagances in dress each drew from the armory of his fascinations. The collector closed the Custom-house an hour earlier, that he might be properly powdered for the occasion. Miss Boyle abandoned, “for the nonce,” her accustomed walk on the Banside, where the officers used to lounge, and in the privacy of her chamber prepared for the event. There is a tradition of her being seen, with a formidable array of curl-papers, so late as four in the afternoon. Mr. Dunlop was in a perpetual trot all day, between his tailor and his bootmaker, sundry alterations being required at a moment’s notice. Mrs. Fumbally herself, however, eclipsed all competitors, as, in a robe of yellow satin, spotted with red, she made her appearance in the drawing-room; her head-dress being a turban of the same prevailing colors, but ornamented by a drooping plume of feathers and spangles so very umbrageous and pendent, that she looked like a weeping-ash clad in tinsel. A crimson brooch of vast proportions – which, on near inspection, turned out to be a portrait of the departed Fumbally, but whose colors were, unhappily, not “fast ones” – confined a scarf of green velvet, from which envious time had worn off all the pile, and left a “sear and yellow” stubble everywhere perceptible.
Whether Mrs. Fum’s robe had been devised at a period when dresses were worn much shorter, or that, from being very tall, a sufficiency of the material could not be obtained, – but true it is, her costume would have been almost national in certain Scotch regiments, and necessitated, for modesty’s sake, a peculiar species of ducking trip, that, with the nodding motion of her head, gave her the gait of a kangaroo.
Scarcely had the various individuals time to give a cursory glance at their neighbors’ finery, when Lady Eleanor appeared leaning on her daughter’s arm. Mr. Dempsey had waited for above half an hour outside the door to offer his escort, which being coldly but civilly declined, the ladies entered.
Mrs. Fumbally rose to meet her guests, and was about to proceed in due form with a series of introducings, when Lady Eleanor cut her short by a very slight but courteous salutation to the company collectively, and then sat down.
The most insufferable assumption of superiority is never half so chilling in its effect upon underbred people as the calm quietude of good manners.
And thus the party were more repelled by Lady Eleanor and her daughter’s easy bearing than they would have felt at any outrageous pretension. The elegant simplicity of their dress, too, seemed to rebuke the stage finery of the others, and very uneasy glances met and were interchanged at this new companionship. A few whispered words, an occasional courageous effort to talk aloud, suddenly ending in a cough, and an uneasy glance at the large silver watch over the chimney, were all that took place, when the uncombed head of a waiter, hired specially for the day, gave the announcement that dinner was served.
“Mr. Dempsey – Mr. Dunlop,” said Mrs. Fumbally, with a gesture towards Lady Eleanor and her daughter. The gentlemen both advanced a step and then stood stock still, as Lady Eleanor, drawing her shawl around her with one hand, slipped the other within her daughter’s arm. Every eye was now turned towards Mr. Dunlop, who was a kind of recognized type of high life; and he, feeling the urgency of the moment, made a step in advance, and with extended arm, said, “May I have the honor to offer my arm?”
“With your leave, I’ll take my daughter’s, sir,” said Lady Eleanor, coldly; and without paying the least attention to the various significant glances around her, she walked forward to the dinner-room.
The chilling reserve produced by the new arrivals had given an air of decorous quietude to the dinner, which, if gratifying to Lady Eleanor and Helen, was very far from being so to the others, and as the meal proceeded, certain low mutterings – the ground swell of a coming storm – announced the growing feeling of displeasure amongst them. Lady Eleanor and Miss Darcy were too unconscious of having offered any umbrage to the party to notice these indications of discontent; nor did they remark that Mr.
Dempsey himself was becoming overwhelmed by the swelling waves of popular indignation.
A very curt monosyllable had met Lady Eleanor in the two efforts she had made at conversation with her neighbor, and she was perhaps not very sorry to find that table-talk was not a regulation of the “Establishment”.
Had Lady Eleanor or Helen been disposed to care for it, they might have perceived that the dinner itself was not less anomalous than the company, and like them suffered sorely from being over-dressed. They, however, affected to eat, and seemed satisfied with everything, resolved that, having encountered the ordeal, they would go through with it to the last. The observances of the table had one merit in the Fumbally household; they were conducted with no unnecessary tediousness. The courses – if we dare so apply the name to an irregular skirmish of meats, hot, cold, and réchauffé– followed rapidly, the guests ate equally so, and the table presented a scene, if not of convivial enjoyment, at least of bustle and animation, that supplied its place. This movement, so to call it, was sufficiently new to amuse Helen Darcy, who, less pained than her mother at their companionship, could not help relishing many of the eccentric features of the scene; everything in the dress, manner, tone of voice, and bearing of the company presenting such a striking contrast to all she had been used to. This enjoyment on her part, although regulated by the strictest good-breeding, was perceived, or rather suspected, by some of the ladies present, and looks of very unmistakable anger were darted towards her from the end of the table, so that both mother and daughter felt the moment a very welcome one when a regiment of small decanters were set down on the board, and the ladies rose to withdraw.
If Lady Eleanor had consulted her own ardent wishes, she would at once have retired to her room, but she had resolved on the whole sacrifice, and took her place in the drawing-room, determined to follow in every respect the usages around her. Mrs. Fumbally addressed a few civil words to her, and then left the room to look after the cares of the household. The group of seven ladies who remained, formed themselves into a coterie apart, and producing from sundry bags and baskets little specimens of female handiwork, began arranging their cottons and worsteds with a most praiseworthy activity.
While Lady Eleanor sat with folded bands and half-closed lids, sunk in her own meditations, Helen arose and walked towards a book-shelf, where some well-thumbed volumes were lying. An odd volume of “Delphine,” a “Treatise on Domestic Cookery,” and “Moore’s Zeluco” were not attractive, and she sauntered to the piano, on which were scattered some of the songs from the “Siege of Belgrade,” the then popular piece; certain comic melodies lay also among them, inscribed with the name of Lawrence M’Farland, a gentleman whom they had heard addressed several times during dinner. While Helen turned over the music pages, the eyes of the others were riveted on her; and when she ran her fingers over the keys of the cracked old instrument, and burst into an involuntary laugh at its discordant tones, a burst of unequivocal indignation could no longer be restrained.
“I declare, Miss M’Corde,” said an old lady with a paralytic shake in her head, and a most villanous expression in her one eye, – “I declare I would speak to her, if I was in your place.”
“Unquestionably,” exclaimed another, whose face was purple with excitement; and thus encouraged, a very thin and very tall personage, with a long, slender nose tipped with pink, and light red hair in ringlets, arose from her seat, and approached where Helen was standing.
“You are perhaps not aware, ma’am,” said she, with a mincing, lisping accent, the very essence of gentility, “that this instrument is not a ‘house piano.’”
