If a few hours had done much to metamorphose _me_, certes, they had done something for my fair friends also; anything more unlike what they appeared in the morning can scarcely be imagined. Matilda in black, with her hair in heavy madonna bands upon her fair cheek, now paler even than usual, never seemed so handsome; while f.a.n.n.y, in a light-blue dress, with blue flowers in her hair, and a blue sash, looked the most lovely piece of coquetry ever man set his eyes upon. The old major, too, was smartened up, and put into an old regimental coat that he had worn during the siege of Gibraltar; and lastly, Mrs. Dalrymple herself was attired in a very imposing costume that made her, to my not over-accurate judgment, look very like an elderly bishop in a flame-colored ca.s.sock. Sparks was the only stranger, and wore upon his countenance, as I entered, a look of very considerable embarra.s.sment that even my thick-sightedness could not fail of detecting.

_Parlez-moi de l'amitie_, my friends. Talk to me of the warm embrace of your earliest friend, after years of absence; the cordial and heartfelt shake hands of your old school companion, when in after years, a chance meeting has brought you together, and you have had time and opportunity for becoming distinguished and in repute, and are rather a good hit to be known to than otherwise; of the close grip you give your second when he comes up to say, that the gentleman with the loaded detonator opposite won't fire, that he feels he's in the wrong. Any or all of these together, very effective and powerful though they be, are light in the balance when compared with the two-handed compression you receive from the gentleman that expects you to marry one of his daughters.

"My dear O'Malley, how goes it? Thought you'd never come," said he, still holding me fast and looking me full in the face, to calculate the extent to which my potations rendered his flattery feasible.

"Hurried to death with preparations, I suppose," said Mrs. Dalrymple, smiling blandly. "f.a.n.n.y dear, some tea for him."

"Oh, Mamma, he does not like all that sugar; surely not," said she, looking up with a most sweet expression, as though to say, "I at least know his tastes."

"I believed you were going without seeing us," whispered Matilda, with a very gla.s.sy look about the corner of her eyes.

Eloquence was not just then my forte, so that I contented myself with a very intelligible look at f.a.n.n.y, and a tender squeeze of Matilda's hand, as I seated myself at the table.

Scarcely had I placed myself at the tea-table, with Matilda beside and f.a.n.n.y opposite me, each vying with the other in their delicate and kind attentions, when I totally forgot all my poor friend Power's injunctions and directions for my management. It is true, I remembered that there was a sc.r.a.pe of some kind or other to be got out of, and one requiring some dexterity, too; but what or with whom I could not for the life of me determine. What the wine had begun, the bright eyes completed; and amidst the witchcraft of silky tresses and sweet looks, I lost all my reflection, till the impression of an impending difficulty remained fixed in my mind, and I tortured my poor, weak, and erring intellect to detect it. At last, and by a mere chance, my eyes fell upon Sparks; and by what mechanism I contrived it, I know not, but I immediately saddled him with the whole of my annoyances, and attributed to him and to his fault any embarra.s.sment I labored under.

The physiological reason of the fact I'm very ignorant of, but for the truth and frequency I can well vouch, that there are certain people, certain faces, certain voices, certain whiskers, legs, waistcoats, and guard-chains, that inevitably produce the most striking effects upon the brain of a gentleman already excited by wine, and not exactly cognizant of his own peculiar fallacies.

These effects are not produced merely among those who are quarrelsome in their cups, for I call the whole 14th to witness that I am not such; but to any person so disguised, the inoffensiveness of the object is no security on the other hand,--for I once knew an eight-day clock kicked down a barrack stairs by an old Scotch major, because he thought it was laughing at him. To this source alone, whatever it be, can I attribute the feeling of rising indignation with which I contemplated the luckless cornet, who, seated at the fire, unnoticed and uncared for, seemed a very unworthy object to vent anger or ill-temper upon.

"Mr. Sparks, I fear," said I, endeavoring at the time to call up a look of very sovereign contempt,--"Mr. Sparks, I fear, regards my visit here in the light of an intrusion."

Had poor Mr. Sparks been told to proceed incontinently up the chimney before him, he could not have looked more aghast. Reply was quite out of his power. So sudden and unexpectedly was this charge of mine made that he could only stare vacantly from one to the other; while I, warming with my subject, and perhaps--but I'll not swear it--stimulated by a gentle pressure from a soft hand near me, continued:--

"If he thinks for one moment that my attentions in this family are in any way to be questioned by him, I can only say--"

"My dear O'Malley, my dear boy!" said the major, with the look of a father-in-law in his eye.

"The spirit of an officer and a gentleman spoke there," said Mrs.

Dalrymple, now carried beyond all prudence by the hope that my attack might arouse my dormant friend into a counter-declaration; nothing, however, was further from poor Sparks, who began to think he had been unconsciously drinking tea with five lunatics.

"If he supposes," said I, rising from my chair, "that his silence will pa.s.s with me as any palliation--"

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! there will be a duel. Papa, dear, why don't you speak to Mr. O'Malley?"

"There now, O'Malley, sit down. Don't you see he is quite in error?"

"Then let him say so," said I, fiercely.

"Ah, yes, to be sure," said f.a.n.n.y. "Do say it; say anything he likes, Mr.

Sparks."

"I must say," said Mrs. Dalrymple, "however sorry I may feel in my own house to condemn any one, that Mr. Sparks is very much in the wrong."

Poor Sparks looked like a man in a dream.

"If he will tell Charles,--Mr. O'Malley, I mean," said Matilda, blushing scarlet, "that he meant nothing by what he said--"

"But I never spoke, never opened my lips!" cried out the wretched man, at length sufficiently recovered to defend himself.

"Oh, Mr. Sparks!"

"Oh, Mr. Sparks!"

"Oh, Mr. Sparks!" chorussed the three ladies.

While the old major brought up the rear with an "Oh, Sparks, I must say--"

"Then, by all the saints in the calendar, I must be mad," said he; "but if I have said anything to offend you, O'Malley, I am sincerely sorry for it."

"That will do, sir," said I, with a look of royal condescension at the _amende_ I considered as somewhat late in coming, and resumed my seat.

This little _intermezzo_, it might be supposed, was rather calculated to interrupt the harmony of our evening. Not so, however. I had apparently acquitted myself like a hero, and was evidently in a white heat, in which I could be fashioned into any shape. Sparks was humbled so far that he would probably feel it a relief to make any proposition; so that by our opposite courses we had both arrived at a point at which all the dexterity and address of the family had been long since aiming without success.

Conversation then resumed its flow, and in a few minutes every trace of our late _fracas_ had disappeared.

By degrees I felt myself more and more disposed to turn my attention towards Matilda, and dropping my voice into a lower tone, opened a flirtation of a most determined kind. f.a.n.n.y had, meanwhile, a.s.sumed a place beside Sparks, and by the muttered tones that pa.s.sed between them, I could plainly perceive they were similarly occupied. The major took up the "Southern Reporter," of which he appeared deep in the contemplation, while Mrs. Dal herself buried her head in her embroidery and neither heard nor saw anything around her.

I know, unfortunately, but very little what pa.s.sed between myself and my fair companion; I can only say that when supper was announced at twelve (an hour later than usual), I was sitting upon the sofa with my arm round her waist, my cheek so close that already her lovely tresses brushed my forehead, and her breath fanned my burning brow.

"Supper, at last," said the major, with a loud voice, to arouse us from our trance of happiness without taking any mean opportunity of looking un.o.bserved. "Supper, Sparks, O'Malley; come now, it will be some time before we all meet this way again."

"Perhaps not so long, after all," said I, knowingly.

"Very likely not," echoed Sparks, in the same key.

"I've proposed for f.a.n.n.y," said he, whispering in my ear.

"Matilda's mine," replied I, with the look of an emperor.

"A word with you, Major," said Sparks, his eye flashing with enthusiasm, and his cheek scarlet. "One word,--I'll not detain you."

They withdrew into a corner for a few seconds, during which Mrs. Dalrymple amused herself by wondering what the secret could be, why Mr. Sparks couldn't tell her, and f.a.n.n.y meanwhile pretended to look for something at a side table, and never turned her head round.

"Then give me your hand," said the major, as he shook Sparks's with a warmth of whose sincerity there could be no question. "Bess, my love," said he, addressing his wife. The remainder was lost in a whisper; but whatever it was, it evidently redounded to Sparks's credit, for the next moment a repet.i.tion of the hand-shaking took place, and Sparks looked the happiest of men.

"_A mon tour_," thought I, "now," as I touched the major's arm, and led him towards the window. What I said may be one day matter for Major Dalrymple's memoirs, if he ever writes them; but for my part I have not the least idea.

I only know that while I was yet speaking he called over Mrs. Dal, who, in a frenzy of joy, seized me in her arms and embraced me. After which, I kissed her, shook hands with the major, kissed Matilda's hand, and laughed prodigiously, as though I had done something confoundedly droll,--a sentiment evidently partic.i.p.ated in by Sparks, who laughed too, as did the others; and a merrier, happier party never sat down to supper.

"Make your company pleased with themselves," says Mr. Walker, in his _Original_ work upon dinner-giving, "and everything goes on well." Now, Major Dalrymple, without having read the authority in question, probably because it was not written at the time, understood the principle fully as well as the police-magistrate, and certainly was a proficient in the practice of it.

To be sure, he possessed one grand requisite for success,--he seemed most perfectly happy himself. There was that _air degage_ about him which, when an old man puts it on among his juniors, is so very attractive. Then the ladies, too, were evidently well pleased; and the usually austere mamma had relaxed her "rigid front" into a smile in which any _habitue_ of the house could have read our fate.

We ate, we drank, we ogled, smiled, squeezed hands beneath the table, and, in fact, so pleasant a party had rarely a.s.sembled round the major's mahogany. As for me, I made a full disclosure of the most burning love, backed by a resolve to marry my fair neighbor, and settle upon her a considerably larger part of my native county than I had ever even rode over. Sparks, on the other side, had opened his fire more cautiously, but whether taking courage from my boldness, or perceiving with envy the greater estimation I was held in, was now going the pace fully as fast as myself, and had commenced explanations of his intentions with regard to f.a.n.n.y that evidently satisfied her friends. Meanwhile the wine was pa.s.sing very freely, and the hints half uttered an hour before began now to be more openly spoken and canva.s.sed.

Sparks and I hob-n.o.bbed across the table and looked unspeakable things at each other; the girls held down their heads; Mrs. Dal wiped her eyes; and the major p.r.o.nounced himself the happiest father in Europe.

It was now wearing late, or rather early; some gray streaks of dubious light were faintly forcing their way through the half-closed curtains, and the dread thought of parting first presented itself. A cavalry trumpet, too, at this moment sounded a call that aroused us from our trance of pleasure, and warned us that our moments were few. A dead silence crept over all; the solemn feeling which leave-taking ever inspires was uppermost, and none spoke. The major was the first to break it.

"O'Malley, my friend, and you, Mr. Sparks; I must have a word with you, boys, before we part."