Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

‘You are a trump, Jack,’ said Phil. ‘Never give in. I never was in such spirits in my life. Two bottles of champagne under my belt, and a cheque for three hundred Paul has just given me without a scrape of my pen; it might have been five if I had only had presence of mind.’

‘Where is Miss Bellew all this time?’ inquired I.

‘I only saw her a moment; she looks saucy, and won’t dance.’

My pride, somewhat stimulated by a fact which I could not help interpreting in Miss Bellew’s favour, I went through the rooms in search of her, and at length discovered her in a boudoir, where a whist-party were assembled. She was sitting upon a sofa, beside a tall, venerable-looking old man, to whom she was listening with a semblance of the greatest attention as I entered. I had some time to observe her, and could not help feeling struck how much handsomer she was than I had formerly supposed. Her figure, slightly above the middle size, and most graceful in all its proportions, was, perhaps, a little too much disposed to embonpoint; the character of her features, however, seemed to suit, if not actually to require as much. Her eyes of deep blue, set well beneath her brow, had a look of intensity in them that evidenced thought; but the other features relieved by their graceful softness this strong expression, and a nose short and slightly, very slightly retroussé, with a mouth, the very perfection of eloquent and winning softness, made ample amends to those who prefer charms purely feminine to beauty of a severer character. Her hair, too, was of that deep auburn through which a golden light seems for ever playing; and this, contrary to the taste of the day, she wore simply braided upon her temple and cheeks, marking the oval contour of her face, and displaying, by this graceful coquetry, the perfect chiselling of her features. Let me add to this, that her voice was low and soft in all its tones; and, if the provincialism with which she spoke did at first offend my ear, I learned afterwards to think that the breathing intonations of the west lent a charm of their own to all she said, deepening the pathos of a simple story, or heightening the drollery of a merry one. Yes, laugh if you will, ye high-bred and high-born denizens of a richer sphere, whose ears, attuned to the rhythm of Metastasio, softly borne on the strains of Donizetti, can scarce pardon the intrusion of your native tongue in the everyday concerns of life – smile if it so please ye; but from the lips of a lovely woman, a little, a very little of the brogue is most seductive. Whether the subject be grave or gay, whether mirth or melancholy be the mood, like the varnish upon a picture, it brings out all the colour into strong effect, brightening the lights, and deepening the shadows; and then, somehow, there is an air of naïveté, a tone of simplicity about it, that appeals equally to your heart as your hearing.

Seeing that the conversation in which she was engaged seemed to engross her entire attention, I was about to retire without addressing her, when suddenly she turned round and her eyes met mine. I accordingly came forward, and, after a few of the commonplace civilities of the moment, asked her to dance.

‘Pray, excuse me, Mr. Hinton; I have declined already several times. I have been fortunate enough to meet with a very old and dear friend of my father – ’

‘Who is much too attached to his daughter to permit her to waste an entire evening upon him. No, sir, if you will allow me, I will resign Miss Bellew to your care.’

She said something in a low voice, to which he muttered in reply. The only words which I could catch – ‘No, no; very different, indeed; this is a most proper person’ – seemed, as they were accompanied by a smile of much kindness, in some way to concern me; and the next moment Miss Bellew took my arm and accompanied me to the ball-room.

As I passed the sofa where the duke and Mrs. Rooney were still seated, his grace nodded familiarly to me, with a gesture of approval; while Mrs. Paul clasped both her hands before her with a movement of ecstasy, and seemed about to bestow upon us a maternal blessing. Fearful of incurring a scene, Miss Bellew hastened on, and, as her arm trembled within mine, I could perceive how deeply the ridicule of her friend’s position wounded her own pride.

Meanwhile, I could just catch the tones of Mrs. Rooney’s voice, explaining to the duke Miss Bellow’s pedigree. ‘One of the oldest families of the land, your grace; came over with Romulus and Remus; and, if it were not for Oliver Cromwell and the Danes – ’ The confounded fiddles lost the rest, and I was left in the dark, to guess what these strange allies had inflicted upon the Bellew family.

The dancing now began, and only between the intervals of the cotillon had I an opportunity of conversing with my partner. Few and brief as these occasions were, I was delighted to find in her a tone and manner quite different from anything I had ever met before. Although having seen scarcely anything of the world, her knowledge of character seemed an instinct, and her quick appreciation of the ludicrous features of many of the company was accompanied by a naïve expression, and at the same time a witty terseness of phrase, that showed me how much real intelligence lay beneath that laughing look. Unlike my fair cousin, Lady Julia, her raillery never wounded: hers were the fanciful combinations which a vivid and sparkling imagination conjures up, but never the barbed and bitter arrows of sarcasm. Catching up in a second any passing absurdity, she could laugh at the scene, yet seem to spare the actor. Julia, on the contrary, with what the French call l’esprit moqueur, never felt that her wit had hit its mark till she saw her victim writhing and quivering beneath her.

There is always something in being the partner of the belle of a ball-room. The little bit of envy and jealousy, whose limit is to be the duration of a waltz or quadrille, has somehow its feeling of pleasure. There is the reflective flattery in the thought of a fancied preference, that raises one in his own esteem; and, as the muttered compliments and half-spoken praises of the bystanders fall upon your ears, you seem to feel that you are a kind of shareholder in the company, and ought to retire from business with your portion of the profits. Such, I know, were some of my feelings at the period in question; and, as I pulled up my stock and adjusted my sash, I looked upon the crowd about me with a sense of considerable self-satisfaction, and began really for the first time to enjoy myself.

Scarcely was the dance concluded, when a general movement was perceptible towards the door, and the word ‘supper,’ repeated from voice to voice, announced that the merriest hour in Irish life had sounded. Delighted to have Miss Bellew for my companion, I edged my way into the mass, and was borne along on the current.

The view from the top of the staircase was sufficiently amusing: a waving mass of feathers of every shape and hue, a crowd of spangled turbans, bald and powdered heads, seemed wedged inextricably together, swaying backwards and forwards with one impulse, as the crowd at the door of the supper-room advanced or receded. The crash of plates and knives, the jingling of glasses, the popping of champagne corks, told that the attack had begun, had not even the eager faces of those nearer the door indicated as much. Nulli oculi retrorsum, seemed the motto of the day, save when some anxious mother would turn a backward and uneasy glance towards the staircase, where her daughter, preferring a lieutenant to a lobster, was listening with elated look to his tale of love and glory. ‘Eliza, my dear, sit next me.’ – ‘Anna, my love, come down here.’ These brief commands, significantly as they were uttered, would be lost to those for whom intended, and only served to amuse the bystanders, and awaken them to a quicker perception of the passing flirtation. Some philosopher has gravely remarked, that the critical moments of our life are the transitions from one stage or state of our existence to another; and that our fate for the future depends in a great measure upon those hours in which we emerge from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, from manhood to maturer years. Perhaps the arguments of time might be applied to place, and we might thus be enabled to show how a staircase is the most dangerous portion of a building. I speak not here of the insecurity of the architecture, nor, indeed, of any staircase whose well-tempered light shines down at noonday through the perfumed foliage of a conservatory; but of the same place, a blaze of lamplight, about two in the morning, crowded, crammed, and creaking by an anxious and elated throng pressing towards a supper-room. Whether it is the supper or the squeeze, the odour of balmy lips, or the savoury smell of roast ducks – whether it be the approach to silk tresses, or sillery mousseux– whatever the provocation, I cannot explain it; but the fact remains: one is tremendously given in such a place, at such a time, to the most barefaced and palpable flirtation. So strongly do I feel on this point, that, were I a lawgiver, I would never award damages for a breach of contract, where the promise was made on a staircase.

As for me, my acquaintance with Miss Bellew was not of more than an hour’s standing. During that time we had contrived to discuss the ball-room, its guests, its lights, its decorations, the music, the dancers – in a word, all the commonplaces of an evening party; thence we wandered on to Dublin, society in general, to Ireland, and Irish habits, and Irish tastes; quizzed each other a little about our respective peculiarities, and had just begun to discuss the distinctive features which characterise the softer emotions in the two nations, when the announcement of supper brought us on the staircase. À propos, or mal à propos’, this turn of our conversation, let the reader decide by what I have already stated; so it was, however, and in a little nook of the landing I found myself with my fair companion’s arm pressed closely to my side, engaged in a warm controversy on the trite subject of English coldness of manner. Advocating my country, I deemed that no more fitting defence could be entered, than by evidencing in myself the utter absence of the frigidity imputed. Champagne did something for me; Louisa’s bright eyes assisted; but the staircase, the confounded staircase, crowned all. In fact, the undisguised openness of Miss Bellew’s manner, the fearless simplicity with which she had ventured upon topics a hardened coquette would not dare to touch upon, led me into the common error of imputing to flirtation what was only due to the untarnished freshness of happy girlhood.

Finding my advances well received, I began to feel not a little proud of my success, and disposed to plume myself upon the charm of my eloquence, when, as I concluded a high-flown and inflated phrase of sentimental absurdity, she suddenly turned round, fixed her bright eyes upon me, and burst out into a fit of laughter.

‘There, there! pray don’t try that! No one but an Irishman ever succeeds in blarney. It is our national dish, and can never be seasoned by a stranger.’

This pull-up, for such it most effectually was, completely unmanned me. I tried to stammer out an explanation, endeavoured to laugh, coughed, blundered, and broke down; while, merciless in her triumph, she only laughed the more, and seemed to enjoy my confusion.

With such a failure hanging over me, I felt happy when we reached the supper-room; and the crash, din, and confusion about us once more broke in upon our conversation. It requires far less nerve for the dismounted jockey, whose gay jacket has been rolled in the mud of a racecourse, resuming his saddle, to ride in amid the jeers and scoffs of ten thousand spectators, than for the gallant who has blundered in the full tide of a flirtation, to recover his lost position, and sustain the current of his courtship. The sarcasm of our sex is severe enough, Heaven knows; but no raillery, no ridicule, cuts half so sharp or half so deep as the bright twinkle of a pretty girl’s eye, when, detecting some exhibition of dramatised passion, some false glitter of pinchbeck sentiment, she exchanges her look of gratified attention for the merry mockery of a hearty laugh. No tact, no savoir faire, no knowledge of the world, no old soldierism that ever I heard of, was proof against this. To go back is bad; to stand still, worse; to go on, impossible.

The best – for I believe it is the only thing to do – is to turn approver on your own misdeeds, and join in the laughter against yourself. Now this requires no common self-mastery, and an aplomb few young gentlemen under twenty possess – hence both my failure and its punishment.

That staircase which, but a moment before, I wished might be as long as a journey to Jerusalem, I now escaped from with thankfulness. Concealing my discomfiture as well as I was able, I bustled about, and finally secured a place for my companion at one of the side-tables. We were too far from the head of the table, but the clear ringing of his grace’s laughter informed me of his vicinity; and, as I saw Miss Bellew shrank from approaching that part of the room, I surrendered my curiosity to the far more grateful task of cultivating her acquaintance.

All the ardour of my attentions – and I had resumed them with nearly as much warmth, although less risk of discomfiture, for I began to feel what before I had only professed – all the preoccupation of my mind, could not prevent my hearing high above the crash and clatter of the tables the rich roundness of Mrs. Rooney’s brogue, as she recounted to the duke some interesting trait of the O’Toole family, or adverted to some classical era in Irish history, when, possibly, Mecænas was mayor of Cork, or Diogenes an alderman of Skinner’s Alley.

‘Ah, my dear! – the Lord forgive me! I mean your grace.’

‘I shall never forgive you, Mrs. Rooney, if you change the epithet.’

‘Ah, your grace’s worship, them was fine times; and the husband of an O’Toole, in them days, spent more of his time harrying the country with his troops at his back, than driving about in an old gig full of writs and latitats, with a process-server behind him.’

Had Mr. Rooney, who at that moment was carving a hare in total ignorance of his wife’s sarcasm, only heard the speech, the chances are ten to one he would have figured in a steel breastplate and an iron head-piece before the week was over. I was unable to hear more of the conversation, notwithstanding my great wish to do so, as a movement of those next the door implied that a large instalment of the guests who had not supped would wait no longer, but were about to make what Mr. Rooney called a forcible entry on a summary process, and eject the tenant in possession.

We accordingly rose, and all (save the party around the viceroy) along with us, once more to visit the ball-room, where already dancing had begun. While I was eagerly endeavouring to persuade Miss Bellew that there was no cause or just impediment to prevent her dancing the next set with me, Lord Dudley de Vere lounged affectedly forward, and mumbled out some broken indistinct phrases, in which the word da-ance was alone audible. Miss Bellew coloured slightly, turned her eyes towards me, curtsied, took his arm, and the next moment was lost amid the crowd.

I am not aware of any readier method of forming a notion of perpetual motion than watching the performance of Sir Roger de Coverley at an evening party in Dublin. It seems to be a point of honour never to give in; and thus the same complicated figures, the same mystic movements that you see in the beginning, continue to succeed each other in a never-ending series. You endeavour in vain to detect the plan, to unravel the tangled web of this strange ceremony; but somehow it would seem as if the whole thing was completely discretionary with the dancers, there being only one point of agreement among them, which is, whenever blown out of breath, to join in a vigorous hands-round; and, the motion being confined to a shuffling of the feet, and a shaking of the elbows, little fatigue is incurred. To this succeeds a capering forward movement of a gentleman, which seemingly magnetises an opposite lady to a similar exhibition; then, after seizing each other rapturously by the hands, they separate to run the gauntlet in and out down the whole line of dancers, to meet at the bottom, when, apparently reconciled, they once more embrace. What follows, the devil himself may tell. As for me, I heard only laughing, tittering, now and then a slight scream, and a cry of ‘Behave, Mr. Murphy!’ etc.; but the movements themselves were conic sections to me, and I closed my eyes as I sat alone in my corner, and courted sleep as a short oblivion to the scene. Unfortunately I succeeded; for, wild and singular as the gestures, the looks, and the voices were before, they now became to my dreaming senses something too terrible. I thought myself in the centre of some hobgoblin orgie, where demons, male and female, were performing their fantastic antics around me, grinning hideously, and uttering cries of menacing import. Tarn O’Shanter’s vision was a respectable tea-party of Glasgow matrons compared to my imaginings; for so distorted were the pictures of my brain, that the leader of the band, a peaceable-looking old man in shorts and spectacles, seemed to me like a grim-visaged imp, who flourished his tail across the strings of his instrument in lieu of a bow.

I must confess that the dancers, without any wish on my part to detract from their efforts, had not the entire merit of this transmutation. Fatigue, for the hour was late, chagrin at being robbed of my partner, added to the heat and the crowd, had all their share in the mystification. Besides, if I must confess it, Mr. Rooney’s champagne was strong. My friend O’Grady, however, seemed but little of my opinion; for, like the master-spirit of the scene, he seemed to direct every movement and dictate every change – no touch of fatigue, no semblance of exhaustion about him. On the contrary, as the hour grew later, and the pale grey of morning began to mingle with the glare of wax-lights, the vigour of his performance only increased, and several new steps were displayed, which, like a prudent general, he seemed to have kept in reserve for the end of the engagement. And what a sad thing is a ball as it draws towards the close! What an emblem of life at a similar period!

How much freshness has faded! how much of beauty has passed away! how many illusions are dissipated! how many dreams the lamplight and chalk floors have called into life fly like spirits with the first beam of sunlight! The eye of proud bearing is humbled now; the cheek, whose downy softness no painter could have copied, looks pale, and wan, and haggard; the beaming looks, the graceful bearing, the elastic step, where are they? Only to be found where youth – bright, joyous, and elastic youth-unites itself to beauty.

Such were my thoughts as the dancers flew past, and many whom I had remarked at the beginning of the evening as handsome and attractive, seemed now without a trace of either – when suddenly Louisa Bellew came by, her step as light, her every gesture as graceful, her cheek as blooming, and her liquid eye as deeply beaming as when first I saw her. The excitement of the dance had slightly flushed her face, and heightened the expression its ever-varying emotions lent it.

Handsome as I before had thought her, there was a look of pride about her now that made her lovely to my eyes. As I continued to gaze after her, I did not perceive for some time that the guests were rapidly taking their leave, and already the rooms were greatly thinned. Every moment now, however, bore evidence of the fact: the unceasing roll of carriages to the door, the clank of the steps, the reiterated cry to drive on, followed by the call for the next carriage, all betokened departure. Now and then, too, some cloaked and hooded figure would appear at the door of the drawing-room, peering anxiously about for a daughter, a sister, or a friend who still lingered in the dance, averring it ‘was impossible to go, that she was engaged for another set.’ The disconsolate gestures, the impatient menaces of the shawled spectres – for, in truth, they seemed like creatures of another world come back to look upon the life they left – are of no avail: the seductions of the ‘major’ are stronger than the frowns of mamma, and though a rowing may come in the morning, she is resolved to have a reel at night.

An increased noise and tumult below-stairs at the same moment informed me that the supper-party were at length about to separate. I started up at once, wishing to see Miss Bellew again ere I took my leave, when O’Grady seized me by the arm and hurried me away.

‘Come along, Hinton! Not a moment to lose; the duke is going.’

‘Wait an instant,’ said I, ‘I wish to speak to – ’

‘Another time, my dear fellow; another time. The duke is delighted with the Rooneys, and we are going to have Paul knighted!’

With these words he dragged me along, dashing down the stairs like a madman. As we reached the door of the dining-room we found his grace, who, with one hand on Lord Dudley’s shoulder, was endeavouring to steady himself by the other.

‘I say, O’Grady, is that you? Very powerful Burgundy this – It ‘s not possible it can be morning!’

‘Yes, your grace – half-past seven o’clock.’

‘Indeed, upon my word, your friends are very charming people. What did you say about knighting some one? Oh, I remember: Mr. Rooney, wasn’t it? Of course, nothing could be better!’

‘Come, Hinton, have you got a sword?’ said O’Grady; ‘I ‘ve mislaid mine somehow. There, that ‘ll do. Let us try and find Paul now.’

Into the supper-room we rushed; but what a change was there! The brilliant tables, resplendent with gold plate, candelabras, and flowers, were now despoiled and dismantled. On the floor, among broken glasses, cracked decanters, pyramids of jelly, and pagodas of blancmange, lay scattered in every attitude the sleeping figures of the late guests. Mrs. Rooney alone maintained her position, seated in a large chair, her eyes closed, a smile of Elysian happiness playing upon her lips. Her right arm hung gracefully over the side of the chair, where lately his grace had kissed her hand at parting. Overcome, in all probability, by the more than human happiness of such a moment, she had sunk into slumber, and was murmuring in her dreams such short and broken phrases as the following: – ‘Ah, happy day! – What will Mrs. Tait say? – The lord mayor, indeed! – Oh, my poor head! I hope it won’t be turned. – Holy Agatha, pray for us! your grace, pray for us I – Isn’t he a beautiful man? Hasn’t he the darling white teeth?’

‘Where’s Paul?’ said O’Grady; ‘where’s Paul, Mrs. Rooney?’ as he jogged her rather rudely by the arm.

‘Ah, who cares for Paul?’ said she, still sleeping; ‘don’t be bothering me about the like of him.’

‘Egad! this is conjugal, at any rate,’ said Phil

‘I have him!’ cried I; ‘here he is!’ as I stumbled over a short, thick figure, who was propped up in a corner of the room. There he sat, his head sunk upon his bosom, his hands listlessly resting on the floor. A large jug stood beside him, in the concoction of whose contents he appeared to have spent the last moments of his waking state. We shook him, and called him by his name, but to no purpose; and, as we lifted up his head, we burst out a-laughing at the droll expression of his face; for he had fallen asleep in the act of squeezing a lemon in his teeth, the half of which not only remained there still, but imparted to his features the twisted and contorted expression that act suggests.

‘Are you coming, O’Grady?’ now cried the duke impatiently.

‘Yes, my lord,’ cried Phil, as he rushed towards the door. ‘This is too bad, Hinton: that confounded fellow could not possibly be moved. I’ll try and carry him.’ As he spoke, he hurried back towards the sleeping figure of Mr. Rooney, while I made towards the duke.

As Lord Dudley had gone to order up the carriages, his grace was standing alone at the foot of the stairs, leaning his back against the banisters, his eyes opening and shutting alternately as his head nodded every now and then forward, overcome by sleep and the wine he had drunk. Exactly in front of him, but crouching in the attitude of an Indian monster, sat Corny Delany. To keep himself from the cold, he had wrapped himself up in his master’s cloak, and the only part of his face perceptible was the little wrinkled forehead, and the malicious-looking fiery eyes beneath it, firmly fixed on the duke’s countenance.