Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX.
The 13th of October 189—.
Lady Humnoddie was rather an early riser, and expected her family to be punctual to breakfast at half-past eight, especially in this busy and anxious time of the autumn session, when a family political discussion took place every morning, from which her husband sometimes gleaned some useful hints for his guidance.
‘Very ugly news, Blanche,’ he remarked, as they took their places at the table. ‘I always feared these Irish rebellion-mongers would get us into hot water sooner or later. We made a mistake there; it would have been sounder policy to let them go with a good grace. Now we may have to let them go with a very bad one.’
‘Bother the Irish, Hum!’ was the reply. ‘You've done all you could in recalling Lord Gurth from Asia. He knows the Irish well, and, depend upon it, he’s a match for them and their French and Yankee allies.’
‘Redhill’s the man, beyond question,’ replied her husband, ‘and, as you say, we did the right thing in recalling him from Erzeroum. But such a force as he will have to cope with, by all accounts, is not driven into the sea at the first charge. I don’t feel comfortable about it, I assure you.’
‘I’m not comfortable either,’ said Friga sulkily, as she took a cup of coffee from her mother, ‘but it’s not about Redhill and his army. I wish I could have been invited to Cornwall with Lesbia Newman; how lucky she is to escape from horrid London! What a nuisance an autumn session is!’
‘I suppose you’d like to go to Ireland itself, Fri, if your precious Lesbia were there,’ said her sister snappishly. ‘The country may go to the dogs, so long as you and your inseparable can moon about together.’
‘It may do that in any case, Hillie,’ she answered; ‘my staying in town will not prevent it.’
‘Oh, come, Friga,’ said her mother, ‘don’t you begin to croak, for Heaven’s sake! or we shall all be in the dumps. There’s reason for your father being annoyed, but your griefs are ridiculous.’
‘The Lord knows what will happen if Redhill should be overpowered,’ said the Marquis gloomily. ‘We sha’n’t hold Ireland, that’s certain; and I don’t want to frighten you, but we shall have our work cut out for us to hold England. The war must be stopped, or I shall throw up the sponge, and let a better man take my place. What the deuce possessed us to get into such a mess I can’t think!’
‘The Thoroughs wanted to keep us out of it,’ remarked Friga, who was not in an amiable mood; ‘but that, no doubt, would have been undignified for a Bungling Coalition.’
‘But, Fri, dear,’ remonstrated her mother, ‘all women of caste are Bunglers.’
‘I doubt it,’ she replied; ‘but even then, it is one thing to be a Bungler because one has thought out the subject and reached that conclusion, as papa has; quite another to be a Bungler simply because that sweet thing in Guardsmen, young Silverton, is a Bungler, and one admires his moustache.’
‘What nonsense you talk, Friga!’ said her mother, while Hilda, at whom the taunt was levelled, laughed. ‘As if society were so frivolous as that! Women—that is, women who are in society—are Bunglers because bungling keeps up the decencies and amenities of life. I’ve no patience with your national reformers and agitators and mischief makers. Why must they go about the country, putting notions into people’s heads that never had any, and upsetting the order which Providence has established from time immemorial?’
‘I’ll tweak Providence’s nose if ever he has the impertinence to come ordering me about.’
‘For shame, Friga!’ said her mother; ‘you have made me forget what I was going to say. Ah—as for your hoydens of girls like Lesbia Newman, they’re the worst of the lot; they unsex each other, and they unsex men.’
‘But then, you see, mamma,’ said Hilda, with a peculiar look at her sister, ‘unsexing is just what that wicked girl opposite me, and her wickeder absent friend, delight in. Don’t you, Fri? But never mind, mamma, go on; it’s so nice to hear all about the proprieties.’
‘I am sorry you make game of me, Hilda,’ said Lady Humnoddie bitterly, ‘although I know, of course, that mothers have no claim upon their daughters’ respect in these enlightened times. However, I think the days are coming when we shall keep a tight rein upon all this nonsense.’
‘I think not,’ said Lord Humnoddie.
‘Yes we shall,’ persisted his wife; ‘we shall keep a tight rein upon all social and political tantrums. We English have always been a practical people, and we don’t stand nonsense after a certain point.’
‘What point, pray, mamma?’ asked Friga.
‘As for those Irish rebels,’ pursued the Marchioness, ‘I can hardly trust myself to speak of them and their doings. Never mind, when this war’s over, and we’ve given a lesson to these foreign interlopers, their turn will come. We shall have to deal with Ireland once for all; and, in my opinion, the only way will be to deport the entire population, and colonise the island with sober English.’
‘Unfortunately, sobriety is just the point in which your colonists might fail,’ interposed Hilda.
‘Well, it’ll be a difficult and sad business, I know,’ pursued her mother, ‘but it’ll be for the best in the long run, and I hope you will bring the matter before Parliament, Hum, at the first opportunity.’
‘I should be afraid of Parliament framing a resolution to the effect that I should be advised to withdraw to that familiar satellite orb whence I appear to have strayed.’
‘Quite right, papa,’ remarked Friga, ‘that would only be fitting.
For now Ireland shall be free, says the Shan Van Voght;
For Lord Gurth will be too rash,
And there'll be a pretty smash;
And then Ireland will be free, says the Shan Van Voght.’
Friga gave out this impromptu version of the old ditty, not humorously, but in a bold, loud, and strange voice which made her father and her sister start and look at her. But Lady Humnoddie was too full of her own prepossessions to heed it.
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Hum,’ she replied, to her husband’s last observation. ‘You know very well that if you had the will of united England at your back, you could carry the measure through Parliament.’
‘Ay, if. I could do many wonders with if. United England! Save the mark!’
‘Well, if you don’t, someone else must,’ she said. ‘The country, I’m very sure, will stand no more nonsense, and it’ll have to be put a stop to. More tea, Hum?’
Brought up amid surroundings such as hers, a spoilt child of fortune and fashion, with no ambition higher than that of shining in the most outwardly brilliant but inwardly shallow circles, and with no philanthropy wider than that which, it must be said, continually prompted her to help the needy with whom she came in contact, the Marchioness of Humnoddie was surely more to be pitied than blamed for these effusions of a light heart. Little did the frivolous, good-natured woman imagine, as she made her last foolish answer, that even while she was speaking the cannon of Queenstown began to send their deep thunder across the sea; that by the time she had taken her afternoon drive in the park, made her round of visits, and returned to dress for dinner, the Channel Fleet would be crippled, the flower of the army destroyed, the United Kingdom torn asunder, invasion threatening and revolution impending over England itself; and that but for an internal source of strength, unacknowledged, disowned, yet growing yearly, a merit which did not belong to any of the present rulers of this realm—in the crisis about to follow the great battle in Ireland, our British Empire had been fated to see the writing on the wall.
Nine a.m. had struck on the 13th of October 189—.