Miss Middleton and Mrs. Mountstuart "Sit beside me, fair Middleton," said the great lady.
"Gladly," said Clara, bowing to her title.
"I want to sound you, my dear."
Clara presented an open countenance with a dim interrogation on the forehead. "Yes?" she said, submissively.
"You were one of my bright faces last night. I was in love with you. Delicate vessels ring sweetly to a finger-nail, and if the wit is true, you answer to it; that I can see, and that is what I like. Most of the people one has at a table are drums. A ruba-dub-dub on them is the only way to get a sound. When they can be persuaded to do it upon one another, they call it conversation."
"Colonel De Craye was very funny."
"Funny, and witty too."
"But never spiteful."
"These Irish or half Irishmen are my taste. If they're not politicians, mind; I mean Irish gentlemen. I will never have another dinner-party without one. Our men's tempers are uncertain.
You can't get them to forget themselves. And when the wine is in them the nature comes out, and they must be buffetting, and up start politics, and good-bye to harmony! My husband, I am sorry to say, was one of those who have a long account of ruined dinners against them. I have seen him and his friends red as the roast and white as the boiled with wrath on a popular topic they had excited themselves over, intrinsically not worth a snap of the fingers. In London!" exclaimed Mrs. Mountstuart, to aggravate the charge against her lord in the Shades. "But town or country, the table should be sacred. I have heard women say it is a plot on the side of the men to teach us our littleness. I don't believe they have a plot. It would be to compliment them on a talent. I believe they fall upon one another blindly, simply because they are full; which is, we are told, the preparation for the fighting Englishman.
They cannot eat and keep a truce. Did you notice that dreadful Mr. Capes?"
"The gentleman who frequently contradicted papa? But Colonel De Craye was good enough to relieve us."
"How, my dear?"
"You did not hear him? He took advantage of an interval when Mr. Capes was breathing after a paean to his friend, the Governor--I think--of one of the presidencies, to say to the lady beside him:
'He was a wonderful administrator and great logician; he married an Anglo-Indian widow, and soon after published a pamphlet in favour of Suttee.'"
"And what did the lady say?"
"She said: 'Oh.'"
"Hark at her! And was it heard?"
"Mr. Capes granted the widow, but declared he had never seen the pamphlet in favour of Suttee, and disbelieved in it. He insisted that it was to be named Sati. He was vehement."
"Now I do remember:--which must have delighted the colonel. And Mr. Capes retired from the front upon a repetition of 'in toto, in toto'. As if 'in toto' were the language of a dinner-table! But what will ever teach these men? Must we import Frenchmen to give them an example in the art of conversation, as their grandfathers brought over marquises to instruct them in salads? And our young men too! Women have to take to the hunting-field to be able to talk with them, and be on a par with their grooms. Now, there was Willoughby Patterne, a prince among them formerly. Now, did you observe him last night? did you notice how, instead of conversing, instead of assisting me--as he was bound to do doubly owing to the defection of Vernon Whitford: a thing I don't yet comprehend--there he sat sharpening his lower lip for cutting remarks. And at my best man! at Colonel De Craye! If he had attacked Mr. Capes, with his Governor of Bomby, as the man pronounces it, or Colonel Wildjohn and his Protestant Church in Danger, or Sir Wilson Pettifer harping on his Monarchical Republic, or any other! No, he preferred to be sarcastic upon friend Horace, and he had the worst of it. Sarcasm is so silly! What is the gain if he has been smart?
People forget the epigram and remember the other's good temper. On that field, my dear, you must make up your mind to be beaten by 'friend Horace'. I have my prejudices and I have my prepossessions, but I love good temper, and I love wit, and when I see a man possessed of both, I set my cap at him, and there's my flat confession, and highly unfeminine it is."
"Not at all!" cried Clara.
"We are one, then."
Clara put up a mouth empty of words: she was quite one with her.
Mrs. Mountstuart pressed her hand. "When one does get intimate with a dainty rogue!" she said. "You forgive me all that, for I could vow that Willoughby has betrayed me."
Clara looked soft, kind, bright, in turns, and clouded instantly when the lady resumed: "A friend of my own sex, and young, and a close neighbour, is just what I would have prayed for. And I'll excuse you, my dear, for not being so anxious about the friendship of an old woman. But I shall be of use to you, you will find. In the first place, I never tap for secrets. In the second, I keep them. Thirdly, I have some power. And fourth, every young married woman has need of a friend like me. Yes, and Lady Patterne heading all the county will be the stronger for my backing. You don't look so mighty well pleased, my dear. Speak out."
"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!"
