A House-Party Part 2

"Hot! you ungrateful, untravelled country squire! I should like to fasten you to a life-buoy in the middle of the Red Sea. Why do Englishmen perspire in every pore the moment the thermometer's above zero in their own land, and yet stand the tropics better than any other Europeans?"

"You know I've sold Achnalorrie?" says his host, _a propos de rien_, but to him Achnalorrie seems _a propos_ of everything in creation.

Brandolin is surprised, but he does not show any surprise. "Ah! Quite right, too. If we wished to please the Radicals we couldn't find any way to please them and injure ourselves equal to our insane fashion of keeping hundreds of square acres at an enormous cost, only that for a few weeks in the summer we may do to death some of the most innocent and graceful of G.o.d's creatures."

"That's just the bosh Dolly talks."

"Lady Usk is a wise politician, then. Let her train Boom for his political life. I don't know which is the more utterly indefensible,--our enormous Highland deer-slaughter or our imbecile butchery of birds. They ought to have recorded the introduction of battue-shooting into the British Isles by the Great and Good on the Albert Memorial."

"One must shoot something."

"I never saw why. But 'something' honestly found by a setter in stubble, and three thousand head of game between five guns in a morning, are very different things. What did they give you for Achnalorrie?"

Usk discourses of Achnalorrie with breathless eloquence, as of a lover eulogizing the charms of a mistress forever lost to him.

Brandolin listens with admirable patience, and affects to agree that the vision of the American crawling on his stomach over soaking heather in a thick fog for eight hours after a "stag of ten" is a vision of such unspeakably enviable bliss that it must harrow the innermost soul of the dispossessed lord of the soil.

"And yet, do you know," he says, in conclusion, "I am such a degenerate mortal, such an unworthy 'son of a gun,' that I would actually sooner be sitting in these lovely, sunny, shady gardens, where one expects to see all Spenser's knights coming through the green shadows towards one, than I would be the buyer of Achnalorrie, even in the third week of August?"

"You say so, but you don't mean it," says the seller of Achnalorrie.

"I never say what I don't mean," says Brandolin. "And I never cared about Scotland."

The other smokes dejectedly, and refuses to be comforted.

"Lady Waverley isn't here?" asks Brandolin, with a certain significance.

Lady Waverley alone would have the power of making the torturing vision of the American among the heather fade into the background of her host's reflections.

CHAPTER II.

"Dolly is nasty about Achnalorrie," says Lord Usk, as they at last rise and approach the house.

"Not logical if she objects to moors on political principles. But ladies are seldom logical when they are as charming as Lady Usk."

"She never likes me to enjoy anything."

"I don't think you are quite just to her: you know I always tell you so." (Brandolin remembers the sweetness with which Dorothy Usk invites Lady Waverley season after season.) "You are a great grumbler, George. I know grumbling is a Briton's privilege, provided for and secured to him in Magna Charta; but still too great abuse of the privilege spoils life."

"n.o.body was ever so bothered as I am." Lord Usk regards himself invariably with compa.s.sion as an ill-used man. "You always take everything lightly; but then you aren't married, and I suppose you get _some_ of your rents?"

"I have always been rather poor, but I don't mind it. So long as I needn't shut up or let the old place, and can keep my boat afloat, I don't much care about anything more. I've enough for myself."

"Ah, that's just it; but when one has no end of family expenses and four great houses to keep up, and the counties looking to one for everything, and the farmers, poor devils, ruined themselves, it's another matter. I a.s.sure you if I hadn't made that sacrifice of Achnalorrie----"

Lady Usk coming out of the garden-room down the steps of one of the low windows spares Brandolin the continuation of the lament. She looks pretty; mindful of her years, she holds a rose-lined sun-umbrella over her head; the lace and muslin of her breakfast-gown sweep the lawn softly; she has her two daughters with her, the Ladies Alexandra and Hermione, known as Dodo and Lilie. She welcomes Brandolin with mixed feelings, though with unmixed suavity. She is glad to see him because he amuses Usk, and is a person of wit and distinction whom everybody tries to draw to their houses; but then he upsets all her nicely-balanced combinations; there is n.o.body for him; he will be the "one out" when all her people so nicely arranged and paired; and, as she is aware that he is not a person to be reconciled to such isolation, he will dispossess somebody else and cause probably those very dissensions and complications from which it is always her effort to keep all her house-parties free. However, there he is; and he is accustomed to be welcomed and made much of wherever he goes. She can do no less.

Brandolin makes himself charming in return, and turns pretty compliments to her and the children, which he can do honestly, for he has always liked Dorothy Usk, and the two young girls are as agreeable objects of contemplation as youth, good looks, fair skins, pretty frocks, open air, much exercise, and an indescribable air of "breeding" can make them. An English patrician child is one of the prettiest and most wholesome things on the face of the earth.

He goes to play lawn tennis with them and their youngest brother Cecil, called the Babe; and Lady Usk, under her rose-lined umbrella, sits as umpire, while her lord saunters off disconsolately to an interview with his steward. In these times those interviews are of an unbroken melancholy, and always result in producing the conviction in his mind that Great Britain cannot possibly last out another year. Without the n.o.bility and gentry what will she be? and they will all go to the lands they've bought in America, if they're in luck, and if they aren't will have to turn s...o...b..acks.

"But the new electorate won't have its shoes blacked,--won't even have any shoes to black," suggests Mr. Lanyon, the land-steward, who began life as an oppidan at Eton and captain of an Eight, but has been glad to take refuge from the storm on the estates of his old Eton comrade, a trust which he discharges with as much zeal as discretion, dwelling contentedly in a rose-covered grange on the edge of the home-woods of Surrenden. If Boom finds things at all in order when he comes into possession, it will be wholly due to John Lanyon.

In one of the pauses of their game the tennis-players hear the brake and the omnibus returning. None of those whom they bring will be visible until luncheon at two o'clock.

"Have you anybody very nice, Lady Usk?" asks Brandolin of his hostess.

She hesitates; there are some women that he would call nice, but then they each have their man. "I hardly know," she answers, vaguely. "You don't like many people, if I remember----"

"All ladies, surely," says Brandolin, with due gravity.

"I'm sure you don't like Grandma Sophy," says the saucy Babe, sitting cross-legged in front of him. He means the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Derry, a very unpleasant person of strong principles, called by the profane "Sophia, by the grace of G.o.d," because she ruled Ireland in a viceroyalty of short duration and long-enduring mischief. She and Brandolin do not agree, a fact which the Babe has seen and noted with the all-seeing eyes of a petted boy who is too much in his mother's drawing-rooms.

"I plead guilty to having offended her Grace Sophia," says Brandolin, "but I conclude that Lady Usk's guests are not all like that most admirable lady."

The Babe and his sisters laugh with much irreverent enjoyment; her Grace is not more appreciated by her grandchildren than she was by Ireland.

"If I had known you were going to be so kind as to remember us, I would have invited some of your friends," says his hostess, without coming to the rescue of her august mother's name. "I am so sorry; but there is n.o.body I think who will be very sympathetic to you. Besides, you know them all already."

"And is that fatal to sympathy? What a cruel suggestion, dear Lady Usk!"

"Sympathy is best new, like a glove. It fits best; you don't see any wrinkles in it for the first hour."

"What cynicism! Do you know that I am very fond of old gloves? But, then, I never was a dandy----"

"Lord Brandolin will like Madame Sabaroff," says Dodo, a very _eveille_ young lady of thirteen.

"Fair prophetess, why? And who is Madame Sabaroff? A second O. K., a female Stepniak?"

"What are those?" says Dodo. "She is very handsome, and a princess in her own right."

"She gave me two Ukraine ponies and a real droschky," says the Babe.

"And Boom a Circa.s.sian mare, all white, and each of us a set of Siberian turquoises," says Lilie.

"Her virtues must be as many as her charms," says Brandolin.

"She is a lovely creature," adds Lady Usk, "but I don't think she is your style at all; you like fast women who make you laugh."

"My tastes are catholic where your adorable s.e.x is in question," says Brandolin. "I am not sure that I do like fast women; they are painful to one's vanity; they flirt with everybody."

Lady Usk smiles. "The season before last, I recollect----"

"Dearest lady, don't revert to pre-historic times. Nothing is so disagreeable as to think this year of what we liked last year."

"It was Lady Leamington last year!" cries the terrible Babe.