The dishes were being changed again as she made this ringing and over-loud speech, and Laurence noticed that they were going back nearly untouched after all. The food had been excellent, and he could only conceive, after a moment, that all Lady Catherine’s protestations were a humbug: they had already dined earlier. He watched covertly as the next course was dished out, and indeed the ladies in particular picked unenthusiastically at their food, scarcely making pretense of conveying a single morsel to their mouths; of the gentlemen only Colonel Prayle was making any serious inroads. He caught Laurence looking and gave him just the slightest bit of a wink, then went on eating with the steady trencherman rhythm of a professional soldier used to take his food when it was before him.
If they had been a large party, coming late to an empty house, Laurence might have conceived of a gracious host holding back dinner for their convenience, or serving a second meal to the newcomers, but not under such pretense, as though they should have been offended with a simple supper, served to them privately, the rest of the company having dined. He was obliged to sit through several more removes, conscious they were a pleasure to no one else of the company; Ferris himself ate with his head down, and only lightly, though in the ordinary course of events he was as rapacious as any nineteen-year-old boy unpredictably fed of late. When the ladies departed to the drawing room, Lord Seymour began to offer port and cigars, with a determined if false note of heartiness, but Laurence refused all but the smallest glass he could take for politeness’ sake, and no one objected to rejoining the ladies quickly, they most of them already beginning to droop by the fire even though not half-an-hour had elapsed.
No-one proposed cards or music; the conversation was low and leaden. “How dull you all are to-night!” Lady Catherine rallied them, with a nervous energy. “You will give Captain Laurence quite a disgust of our society. You cannot often have been in Dorsetshire, Captain, I suppose.”
“I have not had that pleasure, ma’am,” Laurence said. “My uncle lives near Wimbourne, but I have not visited him in many years.”
“Oh! Perhaps you are acquainted with Mrs. Brantham’s family.”
That lady, who had been nodding off, roused enough to say with sleepy tactlessness, “I am sure not.”
“It is not very likely, ma’am; my uncle moves very little outside his political circles,” Laurence said, after a pause. “In any event, my service has kept me from the enjoyment of much wider society, particularly these last years.”
“But what compensations you must have had!” Lady Catherine said. “I am sure it must be glorious to travel by dragon, without any worry that you shall be sunk in a gale, and so much more quickly.”
“Ha ha, unless your ship grows tired of the journey and eats you,” Captain Ferris said, nudging his younger brother with an elbow.
“Richard, what nonsense, as if there were any danger of such a thing! I must insist on your withdrawing the remark,” Lady Catherine said. “You will offend our guest.”
“Not at all, ma’am,” Laurence said, discomfited; the vigor of her objection gave an undeserved weight to the joke, which in any case he could more easily have borne than her compliments; he could not help but feel them excessive and insincere.
“You are kind to be so tolerant,” she said. “Of course, Richard was only joking, but you would be quite appalled how many people in society will say such things and believe them. I am sure it is very poor-spirited to be afraid of dragons.”
“I am afraid it is only the natural consequence,” Laurence said, “of the unfortunate situation prevailing in our country, which keeps dragons so isolated in their distant coverts as to make them a point of horror.”
“Why, what else is to be done with them?” Lord Seymour said. “Put them in the village square?” He amused himself greatly with this suggestion; he was uncomfortably florid in the face, having performed heroically his host’s duties at the second dinner. He even now was doing justice to another glass of port, over which he coughed his laugh.
“In China, they may be seen in the streets of every town and city,” Laurence said. “They sleep in pavilions no more separated from residences than one town-house from another, in London.”
“Heavens; I should not sleep a wink,” Mrs. Brantham said, with a shudder. “How dreadful these foreign customs.”
“It seems to me a most peculiar arrangement,” Seymour said, his brows drawing together. “Look here, how do the horses stand it? My driver in town must go a mile out of his way when the wind is in the wrong quarter and blowing over the covert, because the beasts get skittish.”
Laurence was in honesty forced to admit they did not; horses were not often to be seen in the Chinese cities, except for the trained cavalry beasts. “But I assure you the lack is not felt; aside from mule-carts, they have also dragons employed as a sort of living stagecoach, and citizens of higher estate are conveyed by courier, at what you can imagine must be a much higher rate of speed. Indeed, Bonaparte has already adopted the system, at least within his encampments.”
“Oh, Bonaparte,” Seymour said. “No; thank goodness we organize things more sensibly here. I have been meaning to congratulate you, rather: ordinarily not a month goes by when my tenants are not complaining of the patrols, going overhead and frightening their cattle to pieces; leaving their—” he waved his hand expressively in concession to the ladies “—everywhere, but this sixmonth not a peep. I suppose you have put in new routes, and none too soon. I had nearly made up my mind to speak on the matter in Parliament.”
This remark, thoroughly aware as he was of the circumstances which had reduced the frequency of the patrols, Laurence could not make himself answer civilly; so he did not answer at all, and instead went to fill his glass again.
He took it away and went to stand by the window farthest from the fire, to keep himself refreshed by the cool draught which came in. Lady Seymour had taken a seat beside it, for the same reason; she had put aside her wineglass and was fanning herself. When he had stood there a moment she made a visible effort and engaged him. “So you had to shift from the Navy to the Aerial Corps—It must have been very hard. I suppose you went to sea when you were older?”
“At the age of twelve, ma’am,” Laurence said.
“Oh!—but then you came home again, from time to time, surely? And twelve is not seven; no one can say there is no difference. I am sure your mother must never have thought of sending you from home at such an age.”
Laurence hesitated, conscious that Lady Catherine and indeed most of the other company, which had not already dozed off, were now listening to their conversation. “I was fortunate to secure a berth more often than not, so I was not much at home myself,” he said, as neutrally as he could. “I am sure it must be hard, for a mother, in either case.”
“Hard! of course it is hard,” Lady Catherine said, interjecting here. “What of it? We ought to have the courage to send our sons, if we expect them to have the courage to go, and not this sort of half-hearted grudging sacrifice, to send them so late they are too old to properly take to the life.”
“I suppose,” Lady Seymour said, with an angry smile, “that we might also starve our children, to accustom them to privation, and send them to sleep in a pigsty, so they might learn to endure filth and cold—if we cared very little for them.”
What little other conversation had gone forward, now was extinguished quite; spots of color stood high in Lady Catherine’s cheeks, and Lord Seymour was snoring prudently by the fire, his eyes shut; poor Lieutenant Ferris had retreated into the opposite corner of the room and was staring fixedly out the window into the pitch-dark grounds, where nothing was to be seen.