第39章

'Indeed, I don't pretend to be a connoisseur or conoscenti myself; but I'm told the style is undeniably modern.And was not I lucky, Juliana, not to let that MEDONA be knocked down to me?

I was just going to bid, when I heard such smart bidding; but fortunately the auctioneer let out that it was done by a very old master--a hundred years old.Oh! your most obedient, thinks I!

--if that's the case, it's not for my money; so I bought this, in lieu of the smoke-dried thing, and had it a bargain.'

In architecture, Mrs.Rafferty had as good a taste and as much skill as in painting.There had been a handsome portico in front of the house; but this interfering with the lady's desire to have a veranda, which she said could not be dispensed with, she had raised the whole portico to the second story, where it stood, or seemed to stand, upon a tarpaulin roof.But Mrs.Raffarty explained that the pillars, though they looked so properly substantial, were really hollow and as light as feathers, and were supported with cramps, without DISOBLIGING the front wall of the house at all to signify.

'Before she showed the company any farther,' she said, 'she must premise to his lordship, that she had been originally stinted in room for her improvements, so that she could not follow her genius liberally; she had been reduced to have some things on a confined scale, and occasionally to consult her pocket-compass;but she prided herself upon having put as much into a light pattern as could well be; that had been her whole ambition, study, and problem, for she was determined to have at least the honour of having a little TASTE of everything at Tusculum.'

So she led the way to a little conservatory, and a little pinery, and a little grapery, and a little aviary, and a little pheasantry, and a little dairy for show, and a little cottage for ditto, with a grotto full of shells, and a little hermitage full of earwigs, and a little ruin full of looking-glass, 'to enlarge and multiply the effect of the Gothic.' 'But you could only put your head in, because it was just fresh painted, and though there had been a fire ordered in the ruin all night, it had only smoked.'

In all Mrs.Raffarty's buildings, whether ancient or modern, there was a studied crookedness.

'Yes,' she said, 'she hated everything straight, it was so formal and UNPICTURESQUE.Uniformity and conformity, she observed, had their day; but now, thank the stars of the present day, irregularity and difformity bear the bell, and have the majority.'

As they proceeded and walked through the grounds, from which Mrs.

Raffarty, though she had done her best, could not take that which nature had given, she pointed out to my lord 'a happy moving termination,' consisting of a Chinese bridge, with a fisherman leaning over the rails.On a sudden, the fisherman was seen to tumble over the bridge into the water.

The gentlemen ran to extricate the poor fellow, while they heard Mrs.Raffarty bawling to his lordship, to beg he would never mind, and not trouble himself.

When they arrived at the bridge, they saw the man hanging from part of the bridge, and apparently struggling in the water; but when they attempted to pull him up, they found it was only a stuffed figure which had been pulled into the stream by a real fish, which had seized hold of the bait.

Mrs.Raffarty, vexed by the fisherman's fall, and by the laughter it occasioned, did not recover herself sufficiently to be happily ridiculous during the remainder of the walk, nor till dinner was announced, when she apologised for 'having changed the collation, at first intended, into a dinner, which she hoped would be found no bad substitute, and which she flattered herself might prevail on my lord and the gentlemen to sleep, as there was no moon.'

The dinner had two great faults--profusion and pretension.There was, in fact, ten times more on the table than was necessary; and the entertainment was far above the circumstances of the person by whom it was given; for instance, the dish of fish at the head of the table had been brought across the island from Sligo, and had cost five guineas; as the lady of the house failed not to make known.But, after all, things were not of a piece; there was a disparity between the entertainment and the attendants;there was no proportion or fitness of things--a painful endeavour at what could not be attained, and a toiling in vain to conceal and repair deficiencies and blunders.Had the mistress of the house been quiet; had she, as Mrs.Broadhurst would say, but let things alone, let things take their course, all would have passed off with well-bred people; but she was incessantly apologising, and fussing, and fretting inwardly and outwardly, and directing and calling to her servants--striving to make a butler who was deaf, a boy who was hare-brained, do the business of five accomplished footmen of PARTS and FIGURE.The mistress of the house called for 'plates, clean plates!-hot plates!'

'But none did come, when she did call for them.'

Mrs.Raffarty called 'Larry! Larry! My lord's plate, there!

--James! bread to Captain Bowles!--James! port wine to the major!--James! James Kenny! James!'

'And panting James toiled after her in vain.'

At length one course was fairly got through, and after a torturing half-hour, the second course appeared, and James Kenny was intent upon one thing, and Larry upon another, so that the wine-sauce for the hare was spilt by their collision; but, what was worse, there seemed little chance that the whole of this second course should ever be placed altogether rightly upon the table.Mrs.Raffarty cleared her throat, and nodded, and pointed, and sighed, and set Larry after Kenny, and Kenny after Larry; for what one did, the other undid; and at last the lady's anger kindled, and she spoke:

'Kenny! James Kenny! set the sea-cale at this corner, and put down the grass cross-corners; and match your macaroni yonder with THEM puddens, set--Ogh! James! the pyramid in the middle, can't ye?'