Chapter V: Alison's Luncheon Party

A man, between fifty and sixty years of age, having a short, paunchy, and ungainly figure, grizzled hair, ferret-like eyes with a cunning unscrupulous expression, and a long heavy moustache which was almost white, entered with a smiling face and an easy and well-assured air that was born, not of innate good breeding, but of the supreme confidence given by position and a well-stocked purse.

Coarse and large hands and ears, with an over-display of jewellery, especially two or three gold-digger-like rings, showed that, though the second peer of his family, Lord Cadbury was of very humble origin indeed.

His face wore its brightest smile as he greeted his hostess, Alison, and under his white moustache showed the remainder of a set of teeth that, as Jerry Wilmot said afterwards, were like the remnants of the old Guard, 'few in number and very much the worse for wear.'

He shook the slender hand of Sir Ranald with considerable cordiality, yet not without an air of patronage, bowed over Mrs. Trelawney's gloved fingers, nodded slightly to the three officers (Cadbury did not like military men), and, seating himself by Alison's side, banteringly accused her of running away at Salthill and leaving him behind (he did not say in the ditch), which was precisely what she did do; nor did she attempt to excuse herself, but simply rose and took his arm when Archie announced the luncheon was ready, and, the moment he seated himself, the peer began to expatiate upon the improvements he was making at Cadbury Court, for behoof of the table generally, though his remarks were made especially to her; but she heard with indifference a description of the vineries, pineries, and so forth, which he was erecting at a vast cost.

Not so her father, who, with the _pince-nez_ balanced on his aristocratic nose, heard of these things with a face which wore a curiously mingled expression of satisfaction and contempt; for he failed not to recognize a tone of vulgar ostentation that seemed so well to suit, he thought, 'the tradesman's coronet of yesterday,' and endeavoured to turn the conversation to hunting, though his days for it were passed.

'The world changes, and has changed in many things, Captain Dalton,' said he; 'but true to his old instincts man will always be a huntsman and a soldier.'

'But to uncart a tame deer, or let a hare out of a bag, and then pursue it with horse and dog as if one's life depended upon the recapture, scarcely seems a sane proceeding,' said Lord Cadbury, who still felt the effects of his 'spill' in the field, 'and all unsuited to this age of refinement.'

'I believe only in the refinement that is produced by the education of generations,' said Sir Ranald, a little irrelevantly, as he tugged his white moustache and felt himself unable to repress a covert sneer at the very man for whom he had destined Alison, with whom the peer was too much occupied to hear what was said.

With all her regard and esteem for old Archie Auchindoir, Alison was rather bored by the bewilderment of Goring and others, on whom he was in attendance, at his quaintness, oddity, and unintelligible dialect; and sooth to say, all undeterred by rank and wealth, he was very inattentive and curt to Lord Cadbury, of whose views he was no more ignorant than most servants usually are of their superior's affairs.

Thus many a grimace stole over his wrinkled and saturnine visage as he watched the pair, and muttered, as he carved game at the sideboard--

'It is a braw thing to be lo'ed, nae doubt, but wha wad mool wi' an auld moudiewart like that? No our Miss Alison, certes.'

On the strength of his wealth and rank, of many a pretty present forced upon her unwillingly, yet with her father's consent, and curiously enough upon his great seniority to her in years, which enabled him 'to do the paternal,' as Mrs. Trelawney once said, Lord Cadbury assumed a kind of right of proprietary in Alison Cheyne that was very galling to the latter before her guests, and under the sense of which Bevil Goring chafed in secret as he drank his wine in silence and gnawed his moustache in sheer anger, for Alison was fast becoming to him more than he might ever dare acknowledge to herself.

'You must have married when very young, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Dalton, who was plying her daughter with grapes and crystallised fruits.

'Yes--I was just seventeen.'

'It is so romantic to marry young.'

'Too romantic perhaps to be either a sensible or a practical proceeding,' said Mrs. Trelawney, her slender fingers contrasting in their whiteness with the deep crimson of her claret glass; 'but there is only one thing else better than marrying young.'

'And that is----'

'To die young, Captain Dalton!' she said, laughingly, yet with a curious flash in her soft hazel eyes.

'Like those whom the gods love?'

'Yes.'

Dalton knew not what to make of these strange speeches, but after a time he began to see that she was rather given to indulging in wild and even bitter ones, yet all said laughingly; and he rapidly began to regard her as a species of beautiful enigma.

To Alison it became apparent that a sudden change had come over her friend Laura at the first sight of Captain Dalton; she had grown pale and silent, and even _distrait_--so much so that Alison had whispered to her,

'Does he remind you of anyone?'

'Yes,' she had replied.

'Of whom?'

'Pardon me.'

'She is thinking of her dead husband, no doubt. Dear me, if this should prove a case!' thought the little match-maker, who saw that as the luncheon proceeded Mrs. Trelawney was all gaiety, smiles, and brilliance, and too evidently leaving nothing undone by sallies of wit to fascinate Dalton; and Alison felt grateful to her that by her gaiety she had made the little luncheon quite a success, as she felt it to have been when all returned to the drawing-room to have some music.

'Now, Laura dear,' said she, 'we all look to you first,' and Dalton led the widow to the piano, and she began to play readily with great brilliancy, force, and execution some very rare and difficult pieces of music, while he stood by and turned over the leaves; and when pressed to sing she began at once a little ballad the words of which were curious, and went to a singularly slow, sad, and wailing air:--

'Think not of me in summer's blush,
When flowers around thee spring,
And warbling birds on every bush
Their sweetest music sing.
Think not of me, when winter stern,
His icy throne uprears,
And long lost friends with joy return,
To tell of other years.

'But when the sighing breezes own
Sad autumn's blighting sway,
And withered flowers and leaves are strewn,
In silence o'er thy way;
Then think of me! for withered lies
The dearest hope I nursed;
And I have seen, with bitter sighs,
My brightest dream dispersed.'

Other verses--of which these are a sample--followed, and her voice, tender, plaintive, half passionate, and somewhat piteous, gave a powerful effect to the words, to which Tony Dalton seemed to listen like a man in a dream as he hung over her.

'Oh, Laura,' exclaimed Alison, hurrying to her side, with a merry little laugh, 'that melodramatic ditty is most unlike you. Where, in the name of goodness, did you pick it up?'

'I have heard that song long, long ago, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Captain Dalton, trying to pull himself together.

'When?' asked the singer, turning her eyes upon him with one of their most effective glances under lashes long and dark.

'I cannot say,' replied the officer; 'but I have heard these verses sung by a voice so like yours that I am bewildered.'

'Was it in a dream?' she asked, softly.

'Perhaps.'

'I found them in an old album, in which they were written by a friend years ago.'

'What friend?' asked Dalton, almost mechanically.

'That matters little now, nor could it interest you.'

'It does--it does, because I knew that song well years ago, as you say.'

Her eyelashes quivered, even her hands trembled with some real or perhaps pretended emotion, and she cut short the subject by dashing at once into a piece of Verdi's music, and by her brilliancy and sparkle she seemed to be absorbing Dalton entirely now, greatly to the dismay of Jerry, who was one of her bondsmen.

Mrs. Trelawney, who had undoubtedly been studying the former, saw that he was in many ways an interesting man, whose face and bearing indicated that he had seen much of the world, much of human life, and done all that a soldier might do in it--that there was at times something of restlessness and impatience in his eyes and on his lips, as of a man who had a secret, the clue to which she was curious to find.

When Alison took her place at the piano, where Goring posted himself on duty to turn the leaves (old Lord Cadbury knew not a note of music luckily), Mrs. Trelawney drew her daughter towards her, and said--

'This is my little girl, Captain Dalton. Give your hand, child.'

The latter, a very little girl, indeed--quite a small lady--gave her tiny hand to Dalton, who looked into her shy eyes earnestly, and then said, with a bright smile--

'How singular that she is not like you!'

'No--she is dark-complexioned,'

'And you are almost blonde, though your eyes are hazel. I presume she resembles her father?'

'She does in many points--in others I hope she never will,' added Mrs. Trelawney, in her heart.

'Is it long since she lost him?' asked Dalton, softly.

'She never knew him.'

'How?'

'Fate took him from me before she was born.'

'Poor child!' said Dalton, caressing the girl's soft and silky hair, while her tiny fingers toyed with a ring he wore; 'she is quite a little beauty, but she could not fail to be so.'

'You are pleased to be complimentary, Captain Dalton,' said Mrs. Trelawney, who seemed more pleased with his admiration of the child than of herself, and a little sigh escaped her.

There was now, as when she sang, a great tenderness in her voice, a kind of plaintive ring in it that stirred Dalton's heart curiously, and when she asked him question upon question, with a considerable depth of interest, as to the places he had seen, the adventures that had befallen him, the battles in which he had shared, and so forth, he found himself gradually unfolding to her all his past interests, his present plans, his future hopes--if, indeed, he had any; while she listened with her inquiring eyes, half veiled by their drooping lids, fixed on his, her bosom heaving, and a white hand swaying her feather fan mechanically to and fro.

'And now tell me, Captain Dalton,' said she suddenly, as he paused; 'but you will think me very curious--in all these years of military wandering, how you never thought of marriage?'

'A strange question!' said he.

'And a leading one, you may think,' she resumed, laughing merrily; 'but we widows are privileged people--well?'

'Never!' said he, in a low, husky voice, and, through the bronze the Indian sun had cast upon his cheek, she could see the scarlet blush that mantled there, and, rather shrinking from the turn their conversation had taken, he drew back, and his place was instantly assumed by Jerry Wilmot, who plunged at once into a conversation, which he conducted in a low and confidential tone, while playing with her fan, of which he had possessed himself.

Jerry Wilmot was eminently a handsome fellow. From his well set-up soldierly head to his slender well-moulded feet no fault could be found with him; but though his manner and conversation were full of that subtle flattery and earnestness which, if it does not make its way to a woman's heart, at least appeals to her vanity, he made no progress apparently with Mrs. Trelawney, who on this occasion listened to him with less patience than usual, and without even her generally amused smile.

'Are all men precisely alike to you?' whispered Jerry.

'In the main they are.'

'This evening too?'

'Yes--decidedly so,' she replied, with a side glance. 'Now please give me my fan, Jerry, and don't break it, as you so often do.'