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 a.s.sociating like the members of one family."
Paul nodded an a.s.sent, and she resumed.
"I need scarcely observe to _you_, Mr. Dempsey, how very unsuited either myself or Miss Darcy would be to such an a.s.sembly, if even present circ.u.mstances 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 circ.u.mstances."
"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," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 circ.u.mstance of one"s neighbor becomes an absorbing pa.s.sion. A distrustful impression that n.o.body 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 canva.s.sed 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 compet.i.tors, 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 a.s.sumption 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 _rechauffe_--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,"