CHAPTER VII. SHOWING HOW CHANCE IS BETTER THAN DESIGN

It was not the custom of the day for the lady of the house to present
herself at dinner when the party consisted solely of men, so that
my mother's absence from table appeared nothing remarkable. To her,
however, it did seem somewhat singular that, although she descended
to the drawing-room in all the charming elegance of a most becoming
costume, not one of the guests presented himself to pay his respects,
or, as she would have said, his dutiful homage. It is possible that my
father had forgotten to apprise her that the company of a dinner-party
were not usually in that temperate and discreet frame of mind which
would make their appearance in a drawing-room desirable. In his various
lessons, it is more than likely that this escaped him; and I believe
I am not far wrong in wishing that many other of his instructions had
shared the same fate. The fact was, that in preparing my mother for the
duties and requirements of a novel state of society, he had given her
such false and exaggerated notions of the country and the people, she
had imbibed a hundred absurd prejudices about them which, had she been
left to her own unguided good sense and tact, she would have totally
escaped; and while, as he thought, he was storing her mind with a
thorough knowledge of Ireland, he was simply presenting her with
a terrifying picture of such inconsistency, incongruity, and
wrongheadedness that no cleverness on her part could ever succeed in
combating.

It is perfectly true that the courtly deference and polished reserve of
old French manners, its thousand observances, and its unfailing devotion
to ladies, were not the striking features of Irish country-house life;
but there was a great deal in common between them, and perhaps no
country of Europe in that day could so easily, and with such little
sacrifice, have conformed to the French standard of good-breeding as
Ireland; and I have little doubt that if left to herself, my mother
would have soon discovered the points of contact, without even troubling
her head or puzzling her ingenuity over their discrepancies. However
that may be, there she sat, in all the attractive beauty of full dress,
alone and in silence, save when the door of the distant dinner-room
opening bore to her ears the wild and vociferous merriment of a party
excited by wine and conviviality.

I know not, I can but fancy, what thoughts of her own dear land were