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Visual data mining The VisMiner approach 2nd Edition
Russell K. Anderson Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Russell K. Anderson
ISBN(s): 9781119967545, 1119967546
Edition: 2
File Details: PDF, 3.96 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english
RED BOX RULES ARE FOR PROOF STAGE ONLY. DELETE BEFORE FINAL PRINTING.

Visual

Anderson
Data Mining
THE VISMINER APPROACH

Russell K. Anderson, VisTech, USA

A visual approach to data mining.

Visual Data Mining

This book introduces a visual methodology for data mining demonstrating the application of
methodology along with a sequence of exercises using VisMiner. VisMiner has been developed by
the author and provides a powerful visual data mining tool enabling the reader to see the data that
they are working on and to visually evaluate the models created from the data.
Key features:
• Presents visual support for all phases of data mining including dataset preparation.
• Provides a comprehensive set of non-trivial datasets and problems with accompanying software.
• Features 3-D visualizations of multi-dimensional datasets.
• Gives support for spatial data analysis with GIS like features.
• Describes data mining algorithms with guidance on when and how to use.
• Accompanied by VisMiner, a visual software tool for data mining, developed specifically to
bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Visual Data Mining is designed as a hands-on work book to introduce the methodologies to
students in data mining, advanced statistics, and business intelligence courses. This book provides
Russell K. Anderson
a set of tutorials, exercises, and case studies that support students in learning data mining
processes.

Visual
In praise of the VisMiner approach:
“What we discovered among students was that the visualization concepts and tools brought the analysis
alive in a way that was broadly understood and could be used to make sound decisions with greater
certainty about the outcomes”
Dr. James V. Hansen, J. Owen Cherrington Professor, Marriott School, Brigham Young University, USA
“Students learn best when they are able to visualize relationships between data and results during the
data mining process. VisMiner is easy to learn and yet offers great visualization capabilities throughout
the data mining process. My students liked it very much and so did I.”
Dr. Douglas Dean, Assoc. Professor of Information Systems, Marriott School, Brigham Young
University, USA
Data Mining
THE VISMINER APPROACH
www.wiley.com/go/visminer
Visual Data Mining
Visual Data Mining
The VisMiner Approach

RUSSELL K. ANDERSON
VisTech, USA
This edition first published 2013
# 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Registered office
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for
permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of
the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not
be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand
names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned
in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to
the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering
professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a
competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, Russell K.
Visual data mining : the VisMiner approach / Russell K. Anderson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-119-96754-5 (cloth)
1. Data mining. 2. Information visualization. 3. VisMiner (Electronic resource) I. Title.
QA76.9.D343A347 2012
006.3 012–dc23 2012018033

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781119967545

Set in 10.25/12pt Times by Thomson Digital, Noida, India.

Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi

1. Introduction 1
Data Mining Objectives 1
Introduction to VisMiner 2
The Data Mining Process 3
Initial Data Exploration 4
Dataset Preparation 5
Algorithm Selection and Application 8
Model Evaluation 8
Summary 9

2. Initial Data Exploration and Dataset Preparation

Using VisMiner 11
The Rationale for Visualizations 11
Tutorial – Using VisMiner 13
Initializing VisMiner 13
Initializing the Slave Computers 14
Opening a Dataset 16
Viewing Summary Statistics 16
Exercise 2.1 17
The Correlation Matrix 18
Exercise 2.2 20
The Histogram 21
The Scatter Plot 23
Exercise 2.3 28
vi Contents

The Parallel Coordinate Plot 28

Exercise 2.4 33
Extracting Sub-populations Using the Parallel Coordinate Plot 37
Exercise 2.5 41
The Table Viewer 42
The Boundary Data Viewer 43
Exercise 2.6 47
The Boundary Data Viewer with Temporal Data 47
Exercise 2.7 49
Summary 49

3. Advanced Topics in Initial Exploration and Dataset

Preparation Using VisMiner 51
Missing Values 51
Missing Values – An Example 53
Exploration Using the Location Plot 56
Exercise 3.1 61
Dataset Preparation – Creating Computed Columns 61
Exercise 3.2 63
Aggregating Data for Observation Reduction 63
Exercise 3.3 65
Combining Datasets 66
Exercise 3.4 67
Outliers and Data Validation 68
Range Checks 69
Fixed Range Outliers 69
Distribution Based Outliers 70
Computed Checks 72
Exercise 3.5 74
Feasibility and Consistency Checks 74
Data Correction Outside of VisMiner 75
Distribution Consistency 76
Pattern Checks 77
A Pattern Check of Experimental Data 80
Exercise 3.6 81
Summary 82

4. Prediction Algorithms for Data Mining 83

Decision Trees 84
Stopping the Splitting Process 86
A Decision Tree Example 87
Using Decision Trees 89
 Contents vii

Decision Tree Advantages 89

Limitations 90
Artificial Neural Networks 90
Overfitting the Model 93
Moving Beyond Local Optima 94
ANN Advantages and Limitations 96
Support Vector Machines 97
Data Transformations 99
Moving Beyond Two-dimensional Predictors 100
SVM Advantages and Limitations 100
Summary 101

5. Classification Models in VisMiner 103

Dataset Preparation 103
Tutorial – Building and Evaluating Classification Models 104
Model Evaluation 104
Exercise 5.1 109
Prediction Likelihoods 109
Classification Model Performance 113
Interpreting the ROC Curve 119
Classification Ensembles 124
Model Application 125
Summary 127
Exercise 5.2 128
Exercise 5.3 128

6. Regression Analysis 131

The Regression Model 131
Correlation and Causation 132
Algorithms for Regression Analysis 133
Assessing Regression Model Performance 133
Model Validity 135
Looking Beyond R2 135
Polynomial Regression 137
Artificial Neural Networks for Regression Analysis 137
Dataset Preparation 137
Tutorial 138
A Regression Model for Home Appraisal 139
Modeling with the Right Set of Observations 139
Exercise 6.1 145
ANN Modeling 145
The Advantage of ANN Regression 148
viii Contents

Top-Down Attribute Selection 149

Issues in Model Interpretation 150
Model Validation 152
Model Application 153
Summary 154

7. Cluster Analysis 155

Introduction 155
Algorithms for Cluster Analysis 158
Issues with K-Means Clustering Process 158
Hierarchical Clustering 159
Measures of Cluster and Clustering Quality 159
Silhouette Coefficient 161
Correlation Coefficient 161
Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) 161
Self-Organizing Maps in VisMiner 163
Choosing the Grid Dimensions 168
Advantages of a 3-D Grid 169
Extracting Subsets from a Clustering 170
Summary 173

Appendix A VisMiner Reference by Task 175

Appendix B VisMiner Task/Tool Matrix 187

Appendix C IP Address Look-up 189

Index 191
Preface

VisMiner was designed to be used as a data mining teaching tool with

application in the classroom. It visually supports the complete data mining
process – from dataset preparation, preliminary exploration, and algorithm
application to model evaluation and application. Students learn best when they
are able to visualize the relationships between data attributes and the results of a
data mining algorithm application.
This book was originally created to be used as a supplement to the
regular textbook of a data mining course in the Marriott School of
Management at Brigham Young University. Its primary objective was to
assist students in learning VisMiner, allowing them to visually explore and
model the primary text datasets and to provide additional practice datasets
and case studies. In doing so, it supported a complete step-by-step process
for data mining.
In later revisions, additions were made to the book introducing data mining
algorithm overviews. These overviews included the basic approach of the
algorithm, strengths and weaknesses, and guidelines for application.
Consequently, this book can be used both as a standalone text in courses
providing an application-level introduction to data mining, and as a supplement
in courses where there is a greater focus on algorithm details. In either case, the
text coupled with VisMiner will provide visualization, algorithm application,
and model evaluation capabilities for increased data mining process
comprehension.
As stated above, VisMiner was designed to be used as a teaching tool for
the classroom. It will effectively use all display real estate available.
Although the complete VisMiner system will operate within a single display,
in the classroom setting we recommend a dual display/projector setting.
From experience, we have also found that students using VisMiner also
x Preface

prefer the dual display setup. In chatting with students about their experience
with VisMiner, we found that they would bring their laptop to class, working
off a single display, then plug in a second display while solving problems
at home.
An accompanying website where VisMiner, datasets, and additional prob-
lems may be downloaded is available at www.wiley.com/go/visminer.
Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the faculty and students of the Marriott School of
Management at Brigham Young University. It was their testing of the VisMiner
software and feedback for drafts of this book that has brought it to fruition. In
particular, Dr. Jim Hansen and Dr. Douglas Dean have made extraordinary
efforts to incorporate both the software and the drafts in their data mining
courses over the past three years.
In developing and refining VisMiner, Daniel Link, now a PhD student at the
University of Southern California, made significant contributions to the visual-
ization components. Dr. Musa Jafar, West Texas A&M University provided
valuable feedback and suggestions.
Finally, thanks go to Charmaine Anderson and Ryan Anderson who provided
editorial support during the initial draft preparation.
1

Introduction

Data mining has been defined as the search for useful and previously unknown
patterns in large datasets. Yet when faced with the task of mining a large
dataset, it is not always obvious where to start and how to proceed. The purpose
of this book is to introduce a methodology for data mining and to guide you in
the application of that methodology using software specifically designed
to support the methodology. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the
methodology. The chapters that follow add detail to that methodology and
contain a sequence of exercises that guide you in its application. The exercises
use VisMiner, a powerful visual data mining tool which was designed around
the methodology.

Data Mining Objectives

Normally in data mining a mathematical model is constructed for the purpose of
prediction or description. A model can be thought of as a virtual box that
accepts a set of inputs, then uses that input to generate output.
Prediction modeling algorithms use selected input attributes and a single
selected output attribute from your dataset to build a model. The model, once
built, is used to predict an output value based on input attribute values.
The dataset used to build the model is assumed to contain historical data
from past events in which the values of both the input and output attributes are
known. The data mining methodology uses those values to construct a model
that best fits the data. The process of model construction is sometimes referred
to as training. The primary objective of model construction is to use the model
for predictions in the future using known input attribute values when the value

Visual Data Mining: The VisMiner Approach, First Edition. Russell K. Anderson.
Ó 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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 “Well, Miss Dysart,” said Charlotte, with a sudden burst of candour, “I’ll
tell you frankly what it is. I’m not easy in my mind about leaving that girl
by herself—Francie y’know—she’s very young, and I suppose I may as
well tell the truth, and say she’s very pretty.” She paused for the
confirmation that Pamela readily gave. “So you’ll understand now, Miss
Dysart, that I feel anxious about leaving her in a house by herself, and the
reason I wanted to see you so specially to-day was to ask if you’d do me a
small favour, which, being your mother’s daughter, I’m sure you’ll not
refuse.” She looked up at Pamela, showing all her teeth. “I want you to be
the good angel that you always are, and come in and look her up sometimes
if you happen to be in town.”
The lengthened prelude to this modest request might have indicated to a
more subtle soul than Pamela’s that something weightier lay behind it; but
her grey eyes met Miss Mullen’s restless brown ones with nothing in them
except kindly surprise that it was such a little thing that she had been asked
to do.
“Of course I will,” she answered; “mamma and I will have to come in
about clearing away the rest of that awful bazaar rubbish, and I shall be
only too glad to come and see her, and I hope she will come and lunch at
Bruff some day while you are away.”
This was not quite what Charlotte was aiming at, but still it was
something.
“You’re a true friend, Miss Dysart,” she said gushingly, “I knew you
would be; it’ll only be for a few days, at all events, that I’ll bother you with
me poor relation! I’m sure she’ll be able to amuse herself in the evenings
and mornings quite well, though indeed, poor child, I’m afraid she’ll be
lonely enough!”
Mrs. Gascogne, putting on her gloves at the top of the stairs, thought to
herself that Charlotte Mullen might be able to impose upon Pamela, but
other people were not so easily imposed on. She leaned over the staircase
railing, and said, “Are you aware, Pamela, that your trap is waiting at the
gate?” Pamela got up, and Max, deprived of the comfortable shelter of her
skirts, crawled forth from under the bench and sneaked out of the church
door. “I wouldn’t have that dog’s conscience for a good deal,” went on Mrs.
Gascogne as she came downstairs. “In fact, I am beginning to think that the
only people who get everything they want are the people who have no
consciences at all.”
“There’s a pretty sentiment for a clergyman’s wife!” exclaimed
Charlotte. “Wait till I see the Archdeacon and ask him what sort of theology
that is! Now wasn’t that the very image of Mrs. Gascogne?” she continued
as Pamela and she drove away; “the best and the most religious woman in
the parish, but no one’s able to say a sharper thing when she likes, and you
never know what heterodoxy she’ll let fly at you next!”
The rain was over, and the birds were singing loudly in the thick shrubs
at Tally Ho as Pamela turned the roan pony in at the gate; the sun was
already drawing a steamy warmth from the be-puddled road, and the blue of
the afternoon sky was glowing freshly and purely behind a widening
proscenium of clouds.
“Now you might just as well come in and have a cup of tea; it’s going to
be a lovely evening after all, and I happen to know there’s a grand sponge-
cake in the house.” Thus spoke Charlotte, with hospitable warmth, and
Pamela permitted herself to be persuaded. “It was Francie made it herself;
she’ll be as proud as Punch at having you to—” Charlotte stopped short
with her hand on the drawing-room door, and then opened it abruptly.
There was no one to be seen, but on the table were two half-empty cups
of tea, and the new sponge-cake, reduced by one-third, graced the centre of
the board. Miss Mullen glared round the room. A stifled giggle broke from
the corner behind the piano, and Francie’s head appeared over the top,
instantly followed by that of Mr. Hawkins.
“We thought ’twas visitors when we heard the wheels,” said Miss
Fitzpatrick, still laughing, but looking very much ashamed of herself, “and
we went to hide when they passed the window for fear we’d be seen.” She
paused, not knowing what to say, and looked entreatingly at Pamela. “I
never thought it’d be you—”
It was borne in on her suddenly that this was not the manner in which
Miss Dysart would have acted under similar circumstances, and for the first
time a doubt as to the fitness of her social methods crossed her mind.
Pamela, as she drove home after tea, thought she understood why it was
that Miss Mullen did not wish her cousin to be left to her own devices in
Lismoyle.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
There was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of running
water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer. Christopher’s long
hands moved mysteriously in the crimson light, among phials, baths, and
cases of negatives, while uncanny smells of various acids and compounds
thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks towered dimly in the corners,
a superannuated sofa stood on its head by the wall, with its broken hind-
legs in the air, three old ball skirts hung like ghosts of Bluebeard’s wives
upon the door, from which, to Christopher’s developing tap, a narrow
passage forced its angular way.
There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of attic stairs,
accompanied by a pattering of broad paws, and Pamela, closely attended by
the inevitable Max, slid with due caution into the room.
“Well, Christopher,” she began, sitting gingerly down in the darkness on
an old imperial, a relic of the period when Sir Benjamin posted to Dublin in
his own carriage, “Mamma says she is to come!”
“Lawks!” said Christopher succinctly, after a pause occupied by the
emptying of one photographic bath into another.
“Mamma said she ‘felt Charlotte Mullen’s position so keenly in having
to leave that girl by herself,’ ” pursued Pamela, “ ‘that it was only common
charity to take her in here while she was away.’ ”
“Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with her?” said
Christopher cheerfully.
“Oh, I can’t think,” replied Pamela despairingly; “and I know that
Evelyn does not care about her; only last night she said she dressed like a
doll at a bazaar.”
Christopher busied himself with his chemicals and said nothing.
“The fact is, Christopher,” went on his sister decisively, “you will have
to undertake her. Of course, I’ll help you, but I really cannot face the idea of
entertaining both her and Evelyn at the same time. Just imagine how they
would hate it.”
“Let them hate it,” said Christopher, with the crossness of a good-
natured person who feels that his good nature is going to make him do a
disagreeable thing.
“Ah, Christopher, be good; it will only be for three days, and she’s very
easy to talk to; in fact,” ended Pamela apologetically, “I think I rather like
her!”
“Well, do you know,” said Christopher, “the curious thing is, that though
I can’t talk to her and she can’t talk to me, I rather like her, too—when I’m
at the other end of the room.”
“That’s all very fine,” returned Pamela dejectedly; “it may amuse you to
study her through a telescope, but it won’t do anyone else much good; after
all, you are the person who is really responsible for her being here. You
saved her life.”
“I know I did,” replied her brother irritably, staring at the stumpy candle
behind the red glass of the lantern, unaware of the portentous effect of its
light upon his eyeglass, which shone like a ball of fire; “that’s much the
worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond of union. At that
infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to come within hail of her, Miss
Mullen collected a crowd and made a speech at us. I will say for her that
she hid with Hawkins as much as she could, and did her best to keep out of
my way. As I said before, I have no personal objection to her, but I have no
gift for competing with young women. Why not have Hawkins to dinner
every night and to luncheon every day? It’s much the simplest way of
amusing her, and it will save me a great deal of wear and tear that I don’t
feel equal to.”
Pamela got up from the imperial.
“I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising about yourself
as if you were a mixture of Methuselah and Diogenes; I have seen you
making yourself just as agreeable to young women as Mr. Hawkins or
anyone;” she paused at the door. “She’ll be here the day after to-morrow,”
with a sudden collapse into pathos. “Oh, Christopher, you must help me to
amuse her.”
Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the early train, and
in the course of the morning her cousin got upon an outside car in company
with her trunk, and embarked upon the preliminary stage of her visit to
Bruff. She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she specified as
her “Sunday clothes,” and as the car rattled through Lismoyle, she put on a
pair of new yellow silk gloves with a confidence in their adequacy to the
situation that was almost touching. She felt a great need of their support.
Never since she was grown up had she gone on a visit, except for a night or
two to the Hemphills’ summer lodgings at Kingstown, when such “things”
as she required were conveyed under her arm in a brown paper parcel, and
she and the three Miss Hemphills had sociably slept in the back drawing-
room. She had been once at Bruff, a visit of ceremony, when Lady Dysart
only had been at home, and she had sat and drunk her tea in unwonted
silence, wishing that there were sugar in it, but afraid to ask for it, and
respecting Charlotte for the ease with which she accepted her surroundings,
and discoursed of high and difficult matters with her hostess. It was only the
thought of writing to her Dublin friends to tell them of how she had stayed
at Sir Benjamin Dysart’s place that really upheld her during the drive; no
matter how terrible her experiences might be, the fact would remain to her,
sacred and unalterable.
Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the moment when
the car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, and Gorman the butler came
down them, and solemnly assisted her to alight, while the setter and spaniel,
who had greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of barking, smelt
round her politely but with extreme firmness. She stood forlornly in the big
cool hall, waiting till Gorman should be pleased to conduct her to the
drawing-room, uncertain as to whether she ought to take off her coat,
uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of all things except of her
own ignorance. A white stone double staircase rose overawingly at the end
of the hall; the floor under her feet was dark and slippery, and when she did
at length prepare to follow the butler, she felt that visiting at grand houses
was not as pleasant as it sounded.
A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued from it the
hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty tall hat down over his ears,
and followed by a cadaverous attendant, who was holding an umbrella over
the head of his master, like a Siamese courtier.
“D—n your eyes, James Canavan!” said Sir Benjamin Dysart, “can’t you
keep the rain off my new hat, you blackguard!” Then spying Francie, who
was crossing the hall, “Ho-ho! That’s a fine girl, begad! What’s she doing in
my hall?”
“Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin!” said James Canavan, in tones of
shocked propriety. “That is a young lady visitor.”
 “Then she’s my visitor,” retorted Sir Benjamin, striking his ponderous
stick on the ground, “and a devilish pretty visitor, too! I’ll drive her out in
my carriage to-morrow.”
“You will, Sir Benjamin, you will,” answered his henchman, hurrying
the master of the house along towards the hall door; while Francie, with a
new and wholly unexpected terror added to those she had brought with her,
followed the butler to the drawing-room.
It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she had ever been in,
as she advanced round a screen, and saw Lady Dysart at an immeasurable
distance working at a heap of dingy serge, and behind her, still further off,
the well-curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just topping the cushion of a
low arm-chair.
“Oh, how do you do,” said Lady Dysart, getting up briskly, and dropping
as she did so a large pair of scissors and the child’s frock at which she had
been working. “You are very good to have come over so early.”
The geniality of Lady Dysart’s manner might have assured anyone less
alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill intention in this remark; but
such discernment was beyond Francie.
“Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady Dysart,” she said
abjectly, “and as she had the car ordered for me I didn’t like—”
Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refined bonhommie
that was with her the substitute for tact.
“Why shouldn’t you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking
approvingly at Francie’s embarrassed countenance. “I’ll tell Pamela you are
here. Evelyn, don’t you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her
chair, and shook hands with the new-comer, as Lady Dysart strode from the
room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for nearly a
minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond braced
herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
“Very hot day, isn’t it?” looking at Francie’s flushed cheeks.
“It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the
jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as responsive
as possible, “but it’s lovely and cool in here.”
 She looked at Miss Hope-Drummond’s spotless white gown, and wished
she had not put on her Sunday terra-cotta.
“Oh, is it?”
Silence; during which Francie heard the wheels of her car grinding away
down the avenue, and wished that she were on it.
“Have you been out on the lake much lately, Miss Hope-Drummond?”
Francie’s wish was merely the laudable one of trying to keep the heavy
ball of conversation rolling, but the question awoke a slumbering worm of
discontent in her companion’s well-ordered breast. Christopher was even
now loosing from his moorings at the end of the park, without having so
much as mentioned that he was going out; and Captain Cursiter, her own
compatriot, attached—almost linked—to her by the bonds of mutual
acquaintances, and her thorough knowledge of the Lincolnshire Cursiters,
had not risen to the fly that she had only yesterday thrown over him on the
subject of the steam-launch.
“No; I had rather more than I cared for the last time we were out, the day
of the picnic. I’ve had neuralgia in my face ever since that evening, we
were all kept out so late.”
“Oh, my! That neuralgia’s a horrid thing,” said Francie sympathetically.
“I didn’t get any harm out of it with all the wetting and the knock on my
head and everything. I thought it was lovely fun! But”—forgetting her
shyness in the interest of the moment—“Mr. Hawkins told me that Cursiter
said to him the world wouldn’t get him to take out ladies in his boat again!”
Miss Hope-Drummond raised her dark eyebrows.
“Really? That is very crushing of Captain Cursiter.”
Francie felt in a moment an emphasis on the word Captain; but tried to
ignore her own confusion.
“It doesn’t crush me, I can tell you! I wouldn’t give a pin to go in his old
boat. I’d twice sooner go in a yacht, upsets and all!”
“Oh!”
Miss Hope-Drummond said no more than this, but her tone was
sufficient. Her eyes strayed towards the book that lay in her lap, and the
finger inserted in its pages showed, as if unconsciously, a tendency to open
it again.
 There was another silence, during which Francie studied the dark and
unintelligible oil-paintings on the expanses of wall, the flowers, arranged
with such easy and careless lavishness in strange and innumerable jars and
vases; and lastly, Dinah, in a distant window, catching and eating flies with
disgusting avidity. She felt as if her petticoats showed her boots more than
was desirable, that her gloves were of too brilliant a tint, and that she ought
to have left her umbrella in the hall. At this painful stage of her reflections
she heard Lady Dysart’s incautious voice outside:
“It’s always the way with Christopher; he digs a hole and buries himself
in it whenever he’s wanted. Take her out and let her eat strawberries now;
and then in the afternoon—” the voice suddenly sank as if in response to an
admonition, and Francie’s already faint heart sank along with it. Oh, to be at
the Hemphills, making toffee on the parlour fire, remote from the glories
and sufferings of aristocratic houses! The next moment she was shaking
hands with Pamela, and becoming gradually aware that she was in an
atmosphere of ease and friendliness, much as the slow pleasure of a
perfume makes itself slowly felt. The fact that Pamela had on a grass hat of
sunburnt maturity, and a skirt which bore the imprint of dogs’ paws was in
itself reassuring, and as they went together down a shrubbery walk, and
finally settled upon the strawberry beds in the wide, fragrant kitchen-
garden, the first terrors began to subside in Francie’s trembling soul, and
she found herself breathing more naturally in this strange, rarefied condition
of things. Even luncheon was less formidable than she had expected.
Christopher was not there, the dreaded Sir Benjamin was not there, and
Lady Dysart consulted her about the cutting-out of poor clothes, and
accepted with an almost alarming enthusiasm the suggestions that Francie
diffidently brought up from the depths of past experience of the Fitzpatrick
wardrobe.
The long, unusual leisure of the afternoon passed by her like a pleasant
dream, in which, as she sat in a basket-chair under the verandah outside the
drawing-room windows, illustrated papers, American magazines, the
snoring lethargy of the dogs, and the warm life and stillness of the air were
about equally blended. Miss Hope-Drummond lay aloof in a hammock
under a horse-chestnut tree at the end of the flower-garden, working at the
strip of Russian embroidery that some day was to languish neglected on the
stall of an English bazaar; Francie had seen her trail forth with her arms full
of cushions, and dimly divined that her fellow-guest was hardly tolerating
the hours that were to her like fragments collected from all the holidays she
had ever known. No wonder, she thought, that Pamela wore a brow of such
serenity, when days like this were her ordinary portion. Five o’clock came,
and with it, with the majestic punctuality of a heavenly body, came Gorman
and the tea equipage, attended by his satellite, William, bearing the tea-
table. Francie had never heard the word idyllic, but the feeling that it
generally conveys came to her as she lay back in her chair, and saw the
roses swaying about the pillars of the verandah, and watched the clots of
cream sliding into her cup over the broad lip of the cream jug, and thought
how incredibly brilliant the silver was, and that Miss Dysart’s hands looked
awfully pretty while she was pouring out tea, and weren’t a bit spoiled by
being rather brown. It was consolatory that Miss Hope-Drummond had
elected to have her tea conveyed to her in the hammock; it was too much
trouble to get out of it, she called, in her shrill, languid voice, and no one
had argued the matter with her. Lady Dysart, who had occupied herself
during the afternoon in visiting the garden-beds and giving a species of
clinical lecture on each to the wholly unimpressed gardener, had subsided
into a chair beside Francie, and began to discuss with her the evangelical
preachers of Dublin, a mark of confidence and esteem which Pamela
noticed with astonishment. Francie had got to her second cup of tea, and
had evinced an edifying familiarity with Lady Dysart’s most chosen
divines, when the dogs, who had been seated opposite Pamela, following
with lambent eyes the passage of each morsel to her lips, rushed from the
verandah, and charged with furious barkings across the garden and down
the lawn towards two figures, whom in their hearts they knew to be the sons
of the house, but whom, for histrionic purposes, they affected to regard as
dangerous strangers.
Miss Hope-Drummond sat up in her hammock and pinned her hat on
straight.
“Mr. Dysart,” she called, as Christopher and Garry neared her chestnut
tree, “you’ve just come in time to get me another cup of tea.”
Christopher dived under the chestnut branches, and presently, with what
Miss Hope-Drummond felt to be unexampled stupidity, returned with it, but
without his own. He had even the gaucherie to commend her choice of the
hammock, and having done so, to turn and walk back to the verandah, and
Miss Hope-Drummond asked herself for the hundredth time how the
Castlemores could have put up with him.
 “I met the soldiers out on the lake to-day,” Christopher remarked as he
sat down; “I told them to come and dine to-morrow.” He looked at Pamela
with an eye that challenged her gratitude, but before she could reply, Garry
interposed in tones muffled by cake.
“He did, the beast; and he might have remembered it was my birthday,
and the charades and everything.”
“Oh, Garry, must we have charades?” said Pamela lamentably.
“Well, of course we must, you fool,” returned Garry with Scriptural
directness; “I’ve told all the men about the place, and Kitty Gascogne’s
coming to act, and James Canavan’s going to put papa to bed early and help
us—’ Garry’s voice sank to the fluent complaining undertone that
distinguishes a small boy with a grievance, and Christopher turned to his
mother’s guest.
“I suppose you’ve acted in charades, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Is it me act? Oh goodness, no, Mr. Dysart! I never did such a thing but
once, when I had to read Lady Macbeth’s part at school, and I thought I’d
died laughing the whole time.”
Pamela and Lady Dysart exchanged glances as they laughed at this
reminiscence. Would Christopher ever talk to a girl with a voice like this?
was the interpretation of Pamela’s glance, while Lady Dysart’s was a mere
note of admiration for the way that the sunlight caught the curls on
Francie’s forehead as she sat up to speak to Christopher, and for the colour
that had risen in her cheeks since his arrival, more especially since his
announcement that Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins were coming to
dinner. There are few women who can avoid some slight change of manner
and even of appearance, when a man is added to the company, and it may at
once be said that Francie was far from trying to repress her increased
interest on such an occasion.
“What made you think I could act, Mr. Dysart?” she said, looking at him
a little self-consciously; “do you think I look like an actress?”
The question was interrupted by a cry from the chestnut tree, and Miss
Hope-Drummond’s voice was heard appealing to someone to come and
help her out of the hammock.
“She can get out jolly well by herself,” remarked Garry, but Christopher
got up and lounged across the grass in response to the summons, and
Francie’s question remained unanswered. Lady Dysart rose too, and
watched her son helping Miss Hope-Drummond on to her feet, and strolling
away with her in the direction of the shrubbery. Then she turned to Francie.
“Now, Miss Fitzpatrick, you shall come and explain that Dorcas Society
sleeve to me, and I should not be surprised if you could help me with the
acrostic.”
Lady Dysart considered herself to be, before all things, a diplomatist.
 CHAPTER XIX.
Dinner was over. Gorman was regaling his fellows in the servants’ hall
with an account of how Miss Fitzpatrick had eaten her curry with a knife
and fork, and her Scotch woodcock with a spoon, and how she had accepted
every variety of wine that he had offered her, and taken only a mouthful of
each, an eccentricity of which William was even now reaping the benefit in
the pantry. Mrs. Brady, the cook, dared say that by all accounts it was the
first time the poor child had seen a bit served the way it would be fit to put
into a Christian’s mouth, and, indeed, it was little she’d learn of behaviour
or dinners from Miss Mullen, except to make up messes for them dirty cats
—a remark which obtained great acceptance from her audience. Mr.
Gorman then gave it as his opinion that Miss Fitzpatrick was as fine a girl
as you’d meet between this and Dublin, and if he was Mr. Christopher, he’d
prefer her to Miss Hope-Drummond, even though the latter might be hung
down with diamonds.
The object of this criticism was meantime congratulating herself that she
had accomplished the last and most dreaded of the day’s ceremonies, and,
so far as she knew, had gone through it without disaster. She certainly felt
as if she never had eaten so much in her life, and she thought to herself that,
taking into consideration the mental anxiety and the loss of time involved in
the consumption of one of these grand dinners, she infinitely preferred the
tea and poached eggs which formed her ordinary repast. Pamela was at the
piano, looking a long way off in the dim pink light of the shaded room, and
was playing such strange music as Francie had never heard before, and
secretly hoped never to hear again. She had always believed herself to be
extremely fond of music, and was wont to feel very sentimental when she
and one of that tribe whom it is to be feared she spoke of as her “fellows,”
sat on the rocks at the back of Kingstown pier and listened to the band
playing “Dorothy,” or “The Lost Chord,” in the dark of the summer
evening; but these minor murmurings, that seemed to pass by steep and
painful chromatic paths from one woe to another, were to her merely
exercises of varying difficulty and ugliness, in which Miss Dysart never
seemed to get the chords quite right. She was too shy to get up and search
for amusement among the books and papers upon a remote table, and
accordingly she lay back in her chair and regarded Lady Dysart and Miss
Hope-Drummond, both comfortably absorbed in conversation, and
wondered whether she should ever have money enough to buy herself a tea-
gown.
The door opened, and Christopher sauntered in; he looked round the
room through his eye-glass, and then wandered towards the piano, where he
sat down beside Pamela. Francie viewed this proceeding with less
resentment than if he had been any other man in the world; she did not so
much mind a neglect in which Miss Hope-Drummond was equally
involved, and she was rather frightened than otherwise, when soon
afterwards she saw him, in evident obedience to a hint from his sister, get
up and come towards her with a large photograph-book under his arm. He
sat down beside her, and, with what Pamela, watching from the distant
piano, felt to be touching docility, began to expound its contents to her. He
had done this thing so often before, and he knew, or thought he knew so
well what people were going to say, that nothing but the unfailing
proprietary interest in his own handiwork supported him on these occasions.
He had not, however, turned many pages before he found that Francie’s
comments were by no means of the ordinary tepid and perfunctory sort. The
Oxford chapels were, it is true, surveyed by her in anxious silence; but a
crowd of undergraduates leaning over a bridge to look at an eight—an
instantaneous photograph of a bump-race, with its running accompaniment
of maniacs on the bank—Christopher’s room, with Dinah sitting in his
armchair with a pipe in her mouth—were all examined and discussed with
fervid interest, and a cry of unfeigned excitement greeted the page on which
his own photography made its début with a deep-brown portrait of Pamela.
“Mercy on us! That’s not Miss Dysart! What has she her face blackened
for?”
“Oh, I did that when I didn’t know much about it last winter, and it’s
rather over-exposed,” answered Christopher, regarding his work of art with
a lenient parental eye.
“The poor thing! And was it the cold turned her black that way?”
Christopher glanced at his companion’s face to see whether this
ignorance was genuine, but before he had time to offer the scientific
explanation, she had pounced on a group below.
 “Why, isn’t that the butler? Goodness! he’s the dead image of the Roman
Emperors in Mangnall’s questions! And who are all the other people? I
declare, one of them’s that queer man I saw in the hall with the old
gentleman—” She stopped and stammered as she realised that she had
touched on what must necessarily be a difficult subject.
“Yes, this is a photograph of the servants,” said Christopher, filling the
pause with compassionate speed, “and that’s James Canavan. You’ll see him
to-morrow night taking a leading part in Garry’s theatricals.”
“Why, d’ye tell me that man can act?”
“Act? I should think so!” he laughed, as if at some recollection or other.
“He can do anything he tries, or thinks he can. He began by being a sort of
hedge-schoolmaster, but he was too mad to stick to it. Anyhow, my father
took him up, and put him into the agency office, and now he’s his valet, and
teaches Garry arithmetic when he’s at home, and writes poems and plays. I
envy you your first sight of James Canavan on the boards,” he ended,
laughing again.
“The boards!” Francie thought to herself, “I wonder is it like a circus?”
The photographs progressed serenely after this. Francie began to learn
something of the discreetness that must be observed in inspecting amateur
portrait photography, and Christopher, on his side, found he was being
better entertained by Miss Mullen’s cousin than he could have believed
possible. They turned page after page steadily and conversationally, until
Christopher made a pause of unconscious pride and affection at a group of
photographs of yachts in different positions.
“These are some of the best I have,” he said; “that’s my boat, and that is
Mr. Lambert’s.”
“Oh, the nasty thing! I’m sure I don’t want to see her again! and I
shouldn’t think you did either!” with an uncertain glance at him. It had
seemed to her when, once or twice before, she had spoken of the accident to
him, that it was a subject he did not care about. “Mr. Lambert says that the
upsetting wasn’t her fault a bit, and he likes going out in her just the same. I
think he’s a very brave man, don’t you?”
“Oh, very,” replied Christopher perfunctorily; “but he rather overdoes it,
I think, sometimes, and you know you got the worst of that business.”
“I think you must have had the worst of it,” she said timidly. “I never
was able to half thank you—” Even the equalising glow from the pink
lampshades could not conceal the deepening of the colour in her cheeks.
“Oh, please don’t try,” interrupted Christopher, surprised into a fellow-
feeling of shyness, and hastily turning over the yachting page; “it was
nothing at all.”
“Indeed, I wanted to say it to you before,” persevered Francie, “that time
at the bazaar, but there always were people there. Charlotte told me that
only for you the pike would be eating me at the bottom of the lake!” she
ended with a nervous laugh.
“What a very unpleasant thing to say, and not strictly true,” said
Christopher lightly. “Do you recognise Miss Mullen in this?” he went on,
hurrying from the subject.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Francie, peering into a small and dark picture;
“but I don’t see Charlotte. It’s the waterfall in the grounds, isn’t it?”
Pamela looked over from the piano again, amazed to hear her brother’s
voice raised in loud laughter. There was no denying that the picture was like
a waterfall, and Francie at first rejected with scorn the explanation that it
represented a Sunday-school feast.
“Ah, go on, Mr. Dysart! Why, I see the white water and the black rocks,
and all!”
“That’s the table-cloth, and the black rocks are the children’s faces, and
that’s Miss Mullen.”
“Well, I’m very glad you never took any Sunday-school feast ever I was
at, if that’s what you make them look like.”
“You don’t mean to say you go to Sunday-school feasts?”
“Yes, why wouldn’t I? I never missed one till this year; they’re the
grandest fun out!”
Christopher stared at her. He was not prepared for a religious aspect in
Miss Mullen’s remarkable young cousin.
“Do you teach in Sunday-schools?” He tried to keep the incredulity out
of his voice, but Francie caught the tone.
“You’re very polite! I suppose you think I know nothing at all, but I can
tell you I could say down all the judges of Israel, or the journeyings of St.
Paul this minute, and that’s more than you could do!”
“By Jove, it is!” answered Christopher, with another laugh. “And is that
what you talk about at school feasts?”
 Francie laid her head back on the cushion of her chair, and looked at him
from under her lowered eyelashes. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said.
She suddenly found that this evening she was not in the least afraid of Mr.
Dysart. There were some, notably Roddy Lambert, who called him a prig,
but she said to herself that she’d tell him as soon as she saw him that Mr.
Dysart was a very nice young man, and not a bit stuck-up.
“Very much,” Christopher replied, sticking his eye-glass into his eye,
“that was why I asked.” He really felt curious to know more of this
unwonted young creature, with her ingenuous impudence and her lovely
face. If anyone else had said the things that she had said, he would have
been either bored or revolted, and it is possibly worth noting that,
concurrently with a nascent interest in Francie, he was consciously
surprised that he was neither bored nor revolted. Perhaps it was the
influence of the half-civilised northern music that Pamela was playing, with
its blood-stirring freshness, like the whistling wind of dawn, and its strange
snatches of winding sweetness, that woke some slumbering part of him to a
sense of her charm and youth. But Pamela guessed nothing of what Grieg’s
“Peer Gynt” was doing for her brother, and only thought how gallantly he
was fulfilling her behest.
Before he said good-night to Francie, Christopher had learned a good
deal that he did not know before. He had heard how she and Mr. Whitty,
paraphrased as “a friend of mine,” had got left behind on Bray Head, while
the rest of the Sunday-school excursion was being bundled into the train,
and how she and the friend had missed three trains, from causes not
thoroughly explained, and how Mr. Lambert, who had gone there with her,
just for the fun of the thing, had come back to look for them, and had found
them having tea in the station refreshment room, and had been mad. He had
heard also of her stay at Kingstown, and of how a certain Miss Carrie
Jemmison—sister, as was explained, of another “friend”—was wont to
wake her up early to go out bathing, by the simple expedient of pulling a
string which hung out of the bedroom window over the hall door, and led
thence to Miss Fitzpatrick’s couch, where it was fastened to her foot; in
fact, by half-past ten o’clock, he had gathered a surprisingly accurate idea
of Miss Fitzpatrick’s manner of life, and had secretly been a good deal
taken aback by it.
He said to himself, as he smoked a final cigarette, that she must be a nice
girl somehow not to have been more vulgar than she was, and she really
must have a soul to be saved. There was something about her—some limpid
quality—that kept her transparent and fresh like a running stream, and cool,
too, he thought, with a grin and with a great deal of reflective stroking of
Dinah’s apathetic head, as she lay on his uncomfortable lap trying to make
the best of a bad business. He had not failed to notice the recurrence of Mr.
Lambert’s name in these recitals, and was faintly surprised that he could not
call to mind having heard Miss Fitzpatrick mentioned by that gentleman
until just before her arrival in Lismoyle. Lambert was not usually reticent
about the young ladies of his acquaintance, and from Francie’s own
showing he must have known her very well indeed. He wondered how she
came to be such a friend of his; Lambert was a first-rate man of business
and all that, but there was nothing else first-rate about him that he could
see. It showed the social poverty of the land that she should speak of him
with confidence and even admiration; it was almost pathetic that she should
know no better than to think Roddy Lambert a fine fellow. His thoughts
wandered to the upset of the Daphne; what an ass Lambert had made of
himself then. If she could know how remarkably near her friend, Mr.
Lambert, had come to drowning her on that occasion, she would not,
perhaps, have quoted him so largely as a final opinion upon all matters. No
one blamed a man for not being able to swim, but the fact that he was a bad
swimmer was no excuse for his losing his head and coming cursing and
swearing and doing his best to drown everyone else.
Christopher let Dinah slip on to the floor, and threw the end of his
cigarette out of the open window of his room. He listened to the sleepy
quacking of a wild-duck, and the far-away barking of the gate-house dog.
The trees loomed darkly at the end of the garden; between them glimmered
the pale ghost of the lake, streaked here and there with the long quivering
reflections of the stars, and in and through the warm summer night, the
darting flight of the bats wove a phantom net before his eyes. The Grieg
music still throbbed an untiring measure in his head, and the thought of
Lambert gave way to more accustomed meditations. He had leaned his
elbows on the sill, and did not move till some time afterwards, when a bat
brushed his face with her wings in an attempt to get into the lighted room.
Then he got up and yawned a rather dreary yawn.
“Well, the world’s a very pretty place,” he said to himself; “it’s a pity it
doesn’t seem to meet all the requirements of the situation.”
 He was still young enough to forget at times the conventionality of
cynicism.
 CHAPTER XX.
Lieutenant Gerald Hawkins surveyed his pink and newly shaven face
above his white tie and glistening shirt-front with a smile of commendation.
His moustache was looking its best, and showing most conspicuously.
There was, at least, that advantage in a complexion that burned red, he
thought to himself, that it made a fair moustache tell. In his button-hole was
a yellow rose, given him by Mrs. Gascogne on condition, as she said
(metaphorically it is to be presumed), that he “rubbed it well into Lady
Dysart” that she had no blossom to equal it in shape and beauty. A gorgeous
red silk sachet with his initials embroidered in gold upon it lay on the table,
and as he took a handkerchief out of it his eye fell on an open letter that had
lain partially hidden beneath one side of the sachet. His face fell
perceptibly; taking it up he looked through it quickly, a petulant wrinkle
appearing between his light eyebrows.
“Hang it! She ought to know I can’t get any leave now before the
Twelfth, and then I’m booked to Glencairn. It’s all rot going on like this—”
He took the letter in both hands as if to tear it up, but changing his mind,
stuffed it in among the pocket handkerchiefs, and hurried downstairs in
response to a shout from below. His polo-cart was at the door, and in it sat
Captain Cursiter, wearing an expression of dismal patience that scarcely
warranted Mr. Hawkins’ first remark.
“Well, you seem to be in a good deal of a hurry, old chap. Is it your
dinner or is it Hope-Drummond?”
“When I’m asked to dinner at eight, I like to get there before half-past,”
replied Cursiter sourly; “and when you’re old enough to have sense you
will too.”
Mr. Hawkins drove at full pace out of the barrack gates before he
replied, “It’s all very fine for you to talk as if you were a thousand, Snipey,
but, by George! we’re all getting on a bit.” His ingenuous brow clouded
under the peak of his cap, and his thoughts reverted to the letter that he had
thrust into the sachet. “I’ve been pretty young at times, I admit, but that’s
the sort of thing that makes you a lot older afterwards.”
“Good thing, too,” put in Cursiter unsympathetically.
 “Yes, by Jove!” continued Mr. Hawkins; “I’ve often said I’d take a pull,
and somehow it never came off, but I’m dashed if I’m not going to do it this
time.”
Captain Cursiter held his peace, and waited for the confidence that
experience had told him would inevitably follow. It did not come quite in
the shape in which he had expected it.
“I suppose there isn’t the remotest chance of my getting any leave now,
is there?”
“No, not the faintest; especially as you want to go away for the Twelfth.”
“Yes, I’m bound to go then,” acknowledged Mr. Hawkins with a sigh not
unmixed with relief; “I suppose I’ve just got to stay here.”
Cursiter turned round and looked up at his young friend. “What are you
up to now?”
“Don’t be such an owl, Cursiter,” responded Mr. Hawkins testily; “why
should there be anything up because I want all the leave I can get? It’s a
very common complaint.”
“Yes, it’s a very common complaint,” replied Cursiter, with a certain
acidity in his voice that was not lost upon Hawkins; “but what gave it to
you this time?”
“Oh, hang it all, Cursiter! I know what you’re driving at well enough;
but you’re wrong. You always think you’re the only man in the world who
has any sense about women.”
“I didn’t think I had said anything about women,” returned the
imperturbable Cursiter, secretly much amused at the sensitiveness of Mr.
Hawkins’ conscience.
“Perhaps you didn’t; but you’re always thinking about them and
imagining other people are doing the same,” retorted Hawkins; “and may I
ask what my wanting leave has to say to the question?”
“You’re in a funk,” said Cursiter; “though mind you,” he added, “I don’t
blame you for that.”
Mr. Hawkins debated with himself for an instant, and a confession as to
the perturbed condition of that overworked organ, his heart, trembled on his
lips. He even turned round to speak, but found something so discouraging
to confidence in the spare, brown face, with its uncompromisingly bitten
moustache and observant eyes, that the impulse was checked.
 “Since you seem to know so much about me and the reasons why I want
leave, and all the rest of it, I need say no more.”
Captain Cursiter laughed. “Oh! don’t on my account.”
Hawkins subsided into a dignified silence, which Cursiter, as was his
wont, did not attempt to break. He fell into meditation on the drift of what
had been said to him, and thought that he would write to Greer (Greer was
the adjutant), and see about getting Hawkins away from Lismoyle; and he
was doing so well here, he grumbled mentally, and getting so handy in the
launch. If only this infernal Fitzpatrick girl would have stayed with her cads
in Dublin everything would have been as right as rain. There was no other
woman here that signified except Miss Dysart, and it didn’t seem likely
she’d look at him, though you never could tell what a woman would or
would not do.
Captain Cursiter was “getting on,” as captains go, and he was the less
disposed to regard his junior’s love affairs with an indulgent eye, in that he
had himself served a long and difficult apprenticeship in such matters, and
did not feel that he had profited much by his experiences. It had happened
to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into the house of bondage, and in
it he had remained with eyes gradually opening to its drawbacks, until, a
few years before, the death of the only apparent obstacle to his happiness
had brought him face to face with its realisation. Strange to say, when this
supreme moment arrived, Captain Cursiter was disposed for further delay;
but it shows the contrariety of human nature, that when he found himself
superseded by his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, instead
of feeling grateful to his preserver, he committed the imbecility of horse-
whipping him; and finding it subsequently advisable to leave his regiment,
he exchanged into the infantry with a settled conviction that all women
were liars.
The coach-house at Bruff, though not apparently adapted for theatrical
purposes, had been for many years compelled to that use by Garry Dysart,
and when, at half-past nine o’clock that night, Lady Dysart and her guests
proceeded thither, they found that it had been arranged to the best possible
advantage. The seats were few, and the carriages, ranging from an ancestral
yellow chariot to Pamela’s pony-trap, were drawn up for the use of the rest
of the audience. A dozen or so of the workmen and farm labourers lined the
walls in respectful silence; and the servants of the household were divided
between the outside car and the chariot. In front of a door leading to the
harness-room, two clothes-horses, draped with tablecloths, a long ottoman,
once part of the furniture of a pre-historic yacht of Sir Benjamin’s, two
chairs, and a ladder, indicated the stage, and four stable-lanterns on the floor
served as footlights. Lady Dysart, the Archdeacon, and Mrs. Gascogne sat
in three chairs of honour; the landau was occupied by the rest of the party,
with the exception of Francie and Hawkins, who had followed the others
from the drawing-room at a little distance. When they appeared, the coach-
box of the landau seemed their obvious destination; but at the same instant
the wrangling voices of the actors in the harness-room ceased, the play
began, and when Pamela next looked round neither Francie nor Mr.
Hawkins was visible, and from the open window of an invalided brougham
that had been pushed into the background, came sounds of laughter that
sufficiently indicated their whereabouts.
The most able and accustomed of dramatic critics would falter in the
attempt to master the leading idea of one of Garry’s entertainments; so far
as this performance made itself intelligible, it consisted of nightmare
snatches of “Kenilworth,” subordinated to the exigencies of stage
properties, chiefest among these being Sir Benjamin’s deputy-lieutenant’s
uniform. The sword and cocked hat found their obvious wearer in the Earl
of Leicester, and the white plume had been yielded to Kitty Gascogne,
whose small crimson face grinned consciously beneath the limp feathers.
Lady Dysart’s white bernouse was felt to confer an air of simplicity
appropriate to the part of Amy Robsart, and its owner could not repress a
groan as she realised that the heroine would inevitably be consigned to the
grimy depths of the yacht ottoman, a receptacle long consecrated to the
office of stage tomb. At present, however, it was employed as a sofa, on
which sat Leicester and Amy, engaged in an exhausting conversation on
State matters, the onus of which fell entirely upon the former, his
companion’s part in it consisting mainly of a sustained giggle. It presently
became evident that even Garry was flagging, and glances towards the door
of the harness-room told that expected relief delayed its coming.
“He’s getting a bit blown,” remarked Mr. Hawkins from the window of
the brougham. “Go it, Leicester!”
Garry’s only reply was to rise and stalk towards the door with a dignity
somewhat impaired by the bagginess of the silver-laced trousers. The
deserted countess remained facing the audience in an agony of
embarrassment that might have softened the heart of anyone except her
lord, whose direction, “Talk about Queen Elizabeth, you ass!” was audible
to everyone in the coach-house. Fortunately for Kitty Gascogne, her powers
of soliloquy were not long tested. The door burst open, Garry hurried back
to the ottoman, and had only time to seize Amy Robsart’s hand and kneel at
her feet when a tall figure took the stage with a mincing amble. James
Canavan had from time immemorial been the leading lady in Garry’s
theatricals, and his appearance as Queen Elizabeth was such as to satisfy his
oldest admirers. He wore a skirt which was instantly recognised by the
household as belonging to Mrs. Brady the cook, a crown made of gold
paper inadequately restrained his iron-grey locks, a ham-frill ruff concealed
his whiskers, and the deputy-lieutenant’s red coat, with the old-fashioned
long tails and silver epaulettes, completed his equipment.
His entrance brought down the house; even Lady Dysart forgot her
anxiety to find out where Mr. Hawkins’ voice had come from, and collapsed
into a state afterwards described by the under-housemaid as “her ladyship in
splits.”
“Oh fie, fie, fie!” said Queen Elizabeth in a piping falsetto, paying no
heed to the demonstrations in her favour; “Amy Robsart and Leicester! Oh,
dear, dear, this will never do!”
Leicester still stooped over Amy’s hand, but even the occupants of the
brougham heard the whisper in which he said, “You’re not half angry
enough! Go on again!”
Thus charged, Queen Elizabeth swept to the back of the stage, and,
turning there, advanced again upon the lovers, stamping her feet and
gesticulating with clenched fists. “What! Amy Robsart and Leicester!
Shocking! disgraceful!” she vociferated; then with a final burst, “D—n it! I
can’t stand this!”
A roar of delight broke from the house; the delight always provoked in
rural audiences by the expletive that age has been powerless to wither or
custom to stale. Hawkins’ amusement found vent in such a stentorian
“Bravo!” that Lady Dysart turned quickly at the sound, and saw his head
and Francie’s at the window of the brougham. Even in the indifferent light
of the lamps, Francie discerned disapproval in her look. She sat back
precipitately.
 “Oh, Mr. Hawkins!” she exclaimed, rashly admitting that she felt the
position to be equivocal; “I think I’d better get out.”
Now, if ever, was the time for Mr. Hawkins to take that pull of which he
had spoken so stoutly to Captain Cursiter, but in addition to other
extenuating circumstances, it must be admitted that Sir Benjamin’s
burgundy had to some slight extent made summer in his veins, and caused
him to forget most things except the fact that the prettiest girl he had ever
seen was sitting beside him.
“No, you sha’n’t,” he replied, leaning back out of the light, and taking
her hand as if to prevent her from moving; “you won’t go, will you?”
He suddenly felt that he was very much in love, and threw such entreaty
into the foregoing unremarkable words that Francie’s heart beat foolishly,
and her efforts to take away her hand were very feeble.
“You don’t want to go away, do you? You like sitting here with me?”
The powers of repartee that Tommy Whitty had often found so baffling
failed Francie unaccountably on this occasion. She murmured something
that Hawkins chose to take for assent, and in a moment he had passed his
arm round her waist, and possessed himself of the other hand.
“Now, you see, you can’t get away,” he whispered, taking a wary look
out of the window of the brougham. All the attention of the audience was
engrossed upon the stage, where, at this moment, Queen Elizabeth having
chased Amy and Leicester round the ottoman, was now doing her best not
to catch them as they together scaled the clothes-horse. The brougham was
behind everyone; no one was even thinking of them, and Hawkins leaned
towards Francie till his lips almost touched her cheek. She drew back from
him, but the kiss came and went in a moment, and was followed by more,
that she did not try to escape. The loud clapping of the audience on the exit
of Queen Elizabeth brought Hawkins back to his senses; he heard the quick
drawing of Francie’s breath and felt her tremble as he pressed her to him,
and he realised that so far from “taking a pull,” he had let himself get out of
hand without a struggle. For this rash, enchanting evening, at all events, it
was too late to try to recover lost ground. What could he do now but hold
her hand more tightly than before, and ask her unrepentingly whether she
forgave him. The reply met with an unlooked-for interruption.
The drama on the stage had proceeded to its climax. Amy Robsart was
understood to have suffered a violent death in the harness-room, and her
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