“What! no music, no dancing at Castle Hermitage to-night; and all the ladies sitting in a formal circle, petrifying into perfect statues?” cried Sir Ulick O’Shane as he entered the drawing-room, between ten and eleven o’clock at night, accompanied by what he called his rear-guard, veterans of the old school of good fellows, who at those times in Ireland — times long since past — deemed it essential to health, happiness, and manly character, to swallow, and show themselves able to stand after swallowing, a certain number of bottles of claret per day or night.
“Now, then,” continued Sir Ulick, “of all the figures in nature or art, the formal circle is universally the most obnoxious to conversation, and, to me, the most formidable; all my faculties are spell-bound — here I am like a bird in a circle of chalk, that dare not move so much as its head or its eyes, and can’t, for the life of it, take to its legs.”
A titter ran round that part of the circle where the young ladies sat — Sir Ulick was a favourite, and they rejoiced when he came among them; because, as they observed, “he always said something pleasant, or set something pleasant a-going.”
“Lady O’Shane, for mercy’s sake let us have no more of these permanent circle sittings at Castle Hermitage, my dear!”
“Sir Ulick, I am sure I should be very glad if it were possible,” replied Lady O’Shane, “to have no more permanent sittings at Castle Hermitage; but when gentlemen are at their bottle, I really don’t know what the ladies can do but sit in a circle.”
“Can’t they dance in a circle, or any way? or have not they an elegant resource in their music? There’s many here who, to my knowledge, can caper as well as they modulate,” said Sir Ulick, “to say nothing of cards for those that like them.”
“Lady Annaly does not like cards,” said Lady O’Shane, “and I could not ask any of these young ladies to waste their breath and their execution, singing and playing before the gentlemen came out.”
“These young ladies would not, I’m sure, do us old fellows the honour of waiting for us; and the young beaux deserted to your tea-table a long hour ago — so why you have not been dancing is a mystery beyond my comprehension.”
“Tea or coffee, Sir Ulick O’Shane, for the third time of asking?” cried a sharp female voice from the remote tea-table.
“Wouldn’t you swear to that being the voice of a presbyterian?” whispered Sir Ulick, over his shoulder to the curate: then aloud he replied to the lady, “Miss Black, you are three times too obliging. Neither tea nor coffee I’ll take from you to-night, I thank you kindly.”
“Fortunate for yourself, sir — for both are as cold as stones — and no wonder!” said Miss Black.
“No wonder!” echoed Lady O’Shane, looking at her watch, and sending forth an ostentatious sigh.
“What o’clock is it by your ladyship?” asked Miss Black. “I have a notion it’s tremendously late.”
“No matter — we are not pinned to hours in this house, Miss Black,” said Sir Ulick, walking up to the tea-table, and giving her a look, which said as plainly as look could say, “You had better be quiet.”
Lady O’Shane followed her husband, and putting her arm within his, began to say something in a fondling tone; and in a most conciliatory manner she went on talking to him for some moments. He looked absent, and replied coldly.
“I’ll take a cup of coffee from you now, Miss Black,” said he, drawing away his arm from his wife, who looked much mortified.
“We are too long, Lady O’Shane,” added he, “standing here like lovers, talking to no one but ourselves — awkward in company.”
“Like lovers!” The sound pleased poor Lady O’Shane’s ear, and she smiled for the first time this night — Lady O’Shane was perhaps the last woman in the room whom a stranger would have guessed to be Sir Ulick’s wife.
He was a fine gallant off-hand looking Irishman, with something of dash in his tone and air, which at first view might lead a common observer to pronounce him to be vulgar; but at five minutes after sight, a good judge of men and manners would have discovered in him the power of assuming whatever manner he chose, from the audacity of the callous profligate to the deference of the accomplished courtier — the capability of adapting his conversation to his company and his views, whether his object were “to set the senseless table in a roar,” or to insinuate himself into the delicate female heart. Of this latter power, his age had diminished but not destroyed the influence. The fame of former conquests still operated in his favour, though he had long since passed his splendid meridian of gallantry.
While Sir Ulick is drinking his cup of cold coffee, we may look back a little into his family history. To go no farther than his legitimate loves, he had successively won three wives, who had each, in her turn, been desperately enamoured: the first he loved, and married imprudently for love, at seventeen; the second he admired, and married prudently, for ambition, at thirty; the third he hated, but married, from necessity, for money, at five-and-forty. The first wife, Miss Annaly, after ten years’ martyrdom of the heart, sank, childless — a victim, it was said, to love and jealousy. The second wife, Lady Theodosia, struggled stoutly for power, backed by strong and high connexions; having, moreover, the advantage of being a mother, and mother of an only son and heir, the representative of a father in whom ambition had, by this time, become the ruling passion: the Lady Theodosia stood her ground, wrangling and wrestling through a fourteen years’ wedlock, till at last, to Sir Ulick’s great relief, not to say joy, her ladyship was carried off by a bad fever, or a worse apothecary. His present lady, formerly Mrs. Scraggs, a London widow of very large fortune, happened to see Sir Ulick when he went to present some address, or settle some point between the English and Irish government:— he was in deep mourning at the time, and the widow pitied him very much. But she was not the sort of woman he would ever have suspected could like him — she was a strict pattern lady, severe on the times, and, not unfrequently, lecturing young men gratis. Now Sir Ulick O’Shane was a sinner; how then could he please a saint? He did, however — but the saint did not please him — though she set to work for the good of his soul, and in her own person relaxed, to please his taste, even to the wearing of rouge and pearl-powder, and false hair, and false eyebrows, and all the falsifications which the setters-up could furnish. But after she had purchased all of youth which age can purchase for money, it would not do. The Widow Scraggs might, with her “lack lustre” eyes, have speculated for ever in vain upon Sir Ulick, but that, fortunately for her passion, at one and the same time, the Irish ministry were turned out, and an Irish canal burst. Sir Ulick losing his place by the change of ministry, and one half of his fortune by the canal, in which it had been sunk; and having spent in unsubstantial schemes and splendid living more than the other half; now, in desperate misery, laid hold of the Widow Scraggs. After a nine days’ courtship she became a bride, and she and her plum in the stocks — but not her messuage, house, and lands, in Kent — became the property of Sir Ulick O’Shane. “Love was then lord of all” with her, and she was now to accompany Sir Ulick to Ireland. Late in life she was carried to a new country, and set down among a people whom she had all her previous days been taught to hold in contempt or aversion: she dreaded Irish disturbances much, and Irish dirt more; she was persuaded that nothing could be right, good, or genteel, that was not English. Her habits and tastes were immutably fixed. Her experience had been confined to a London life, and in proportion as her sphere of observation had been contracted, her disposition was intolerant. She made no allowance for the difference of opinion, customs, and situation, much less for the faults or foibles of people who were to her strangers and foreigners — her ladyship was therefore little likely to please or be pleased in her new situation. Her husband was the only individual, the only thing, animate or inanimate, that she liked in Ireland — and while she was desperately in love with an Irishman, she disliked Ireland and the Irish: even the Irish talents and virtues, their wit, humour, generosity of character, and freedom of manner, were lost upon her — her country neighbours were repelled by her air of taciturn self-sufficiency — and she, for her part, declared she would have been satisfied to have lived alone at Castle Hermitage with Sir Ulick. But Sir Ulick had no notion of living alone with her, or for any body. His habits were all social and convivial — he loved show and company: he had been all his life in the habit of entertaining all ranks of people at Castle Hermitage, from his excellency the Lord-Lieutenant and the commander-in-chief for the time being, to Tim the gauger, and honest Tom Kelly, the stalko.
He talked of the necessity of keeping up a neighbourhood, and maintaining his interest in the county, as the first duties of man. Ostensibly Sir Ulick had no motive in all this, but the hospitable wish of seeing Castle Hermitage one continued scene of festivity; but under this good fellowship and apparent thoughtlessness and profusion, there was an eye to his own interest, and a keen view to the improvement of his fortune and the advancement of his family. With these habits and views, it was little likely that he should yield to the romantic, jealous, or economic tastes of his new lady — a bride ten years older than himself! Lady O’Shane was, soon after her arrival in Ireland, compelled to see her house as full of company as it could possibly hold; and her ladyship was condemned eternally, to do the honours to successive troops of friends, of whom she knew nothing, and of whom she disliked all she saw or heard. Her dear Sir Ulick was, or seemed, so engrossed by the business of pleasure, so taken up with his guests, that but a few minutes in the day could she ever obtain of his company. She saw herself surrounded by the young, the fair, and the gay, to whom Sir Ulick devoted his assiduous and gallant attentions; and though his age, and his being a married man, seemed to preclude, in the opinion of the cool or indifferent spectator, all idea of any real cause for jealousy, yet it was not so with poor Lady O’Shane’s magnifying imagination. The demon of jealousy tortured her; and to enhance her sufferings, she was obliged to conceal them, lest they should become subjects of private mockery or public derision. It is the peculiar misfortune or punishment of misplaced, and yet more of unseasonable, passions, that in their distresses they obtain no sympathy; and while the passion is in all its consequence tragics to the sufferer, in all its exhibitions it is — ludicrous to the spectator. Lady O’Shane could not be young, and would not be old: so without the charms of youth, or the dignity of age, she could neither inspire love, nor command respect; nor could she find fit occupation or amusement, or solace or refuge, in any combination of company or class of society. Unluckily, as her judgment, never discriminating, was now blinded by jealousy, the two persons of all his family connexions upon whom she pitched as the peculiar objects of her fear and hatred were precisely those who were most disposed to pity and befriend her — to serve her in private with Sir Ulick, and to treat her with deference in public: these two persons were Lady Annaly and her daughter. Lady Annaly was a distant relation of Sir Ulick’s first wife, during whose life some circumstances had occurred which had excited her ladyship’s indignation against him. For many years all commerce between them had ceased. Lady Annaly was a woman of generous indignation, strong principles, and warm affections. Her rank, her high connexions, her high character, her having, from the time she was left a young and beautiful widow, devoted herself to the education and the interests of her children; her having persevered in her lofty course, superior to all the numerous temptations of love, vanity, or ambition, by which she was assailed; her long and able administration of a large property, during the minority of her son; her subsequent graceful resignation of power; his affection, gratitude, and deference for his mother, which now continued to prolong her influence, and exemplify her precepts in every act of his own; altogether placed this lady high in public consideration — high as any individual could stand in a country, where national enthusiastic attachment is ever excited by certain noble qualities congenial with the Irish nature. Sir Ulick O’Shane, sensible of the disadvantage of having estranged such a family connexion, and fully capable of appreciating the value of her friendship, had of late years taken infinite pains to redeem himself in Lady Annaly’s opinion. His consummate address, aided and abetted and concealed as it was by his off-hand manner, would scarcely have succeeded, had it not been supported also by some substantial good qualities, especially by the natural candour and generosity of his disposition. In favour of the originally strong, and, through all his errors, wonderfully surviving taste for virtue, some of his manifold transgressions might be forgiven: there was much hope and promise of amendment; and besides, to state things just as they were, he had propitiated the mother, irresistibly, by his enthusiastic admiration of the daughter — so that Lady Annaly had at last consented to revisit Castle Hermitage. Her ladyship and her daughter were now on this reconciliation visit; Sir Ulick was extremely anxious to make it agreeable. Besides the credit of her friendship, he had other reasons for wishing to conciliate her: his son Marcus was just twenty — two years older than Miss Annaly — in course of time, Sir Ulick thought it might be a match — his son could not possibly make a better — beauty, fortune, family connexions, every thing that the hearts of young and old desire. Besides (for in Sir Ulick’s calculations besides was a word frequently occurring), besides, Miss Annaly’s brother was not as strong in body as in mind — in two illnesses his life had been despaired of — a third might carry him off — the estate would probably come to Miss Annaly. Besides, be this hereafter as it might, there was at this present time a considerable debt due by Sir Ulick to these Annalys, with accumulated interest, since the time of his first marriage; and this debt would be merged in Miss Annaly’s portion, should she become his son’s wife. All this was well calculated; but to say nothing of the character or affections of the son, Sir Ulick had omitted to consider Lady O’Shane, or he had taken it for granted that her love for him would induce her at once to enter into and second his views. It did not so happen. On the contrary, the dislike which Lady O’Shane took at sight to both the mother and daughter — to the daughter instinctively, at sight of her youth and beauty; to the mother reflectively, on account of her matronly dress and dignified deportment, in too striking contrast to her own frippery appearance — increased every day, and every hour, when she saw the attentions, the adoration, that Sir Ulick paid to Miss Annaly, and the deference and respect he showed to Lady Annaly, all for qualities and accomplishments in which Lady O’Shane was conscious that she was irremediably deficient. Sir Ulick thought to extinguish her jealousy, by opening to her his views on Miss Annaly for his son; but the jealousy, taking only a new direction, strengthened in its course. Lady O’Shane did not like her stepson — had indeed no great reason to like him; Marcus disliked her, and was at no pains to conceal his dislike. She dreaded the accession of domestic power and influence he would gain by such a marriage. She could not bear the thoughts of having a daughter-in-law brought into the house — placed in eternal comparison with her. Sir Ulick O’Shane was conscious that his marriage exposed him to some share of ridicule; but hitherto, except when his taste for raillery, and the diversion of exciting her causeless jealousy, interfered with his purpose, he had always treated her ladyship as he conceived that Lady O’Shane ought to be treated. Naturally good-natured, and habitually attentive to the sex, he had indeed kept up appearances better than could have been expected, from a man of his former habits, to a woman of her ladyship’s present age; but if she now crossed his favourite scheme, it would be all over with her — her submission to his will had hitherto been a sufficient and a convenient proof, and the only proof he desired, of her love. Her ladyship’s evil genius, in the shape of Miss Black, her humble companion, was now busily instigating her to be refractory. Miss Black had frequently whispered, that if Lady O’Shane would show more spirit, she would do better with Sir Ulick; that his late wife, Lady Theodosia, had ruled him, by showing proper spirit; that in particular, she should make a stand against the encroachments of Sir Ulick’s son Marcus, and of his friend and companion, young Ormond. In consequence of these suggestions, Lady O’Shane had most judiciously thwarted both these young men in trifles, till she had become their aversion: this aversion Marcus felt more than he expressed, and Ormond expressed more strongly than he felt. To Sir Ulick, his son and heir was his first great object in life; yet, though in all things he preferred the interest of Marcus, he was not as fond of Marcus as he was of young Ormond. Young Ormond was the son of the friend of Sir Ulick O’Shane’s youthful and warm-hearted days — the son of an officer who had served in the same regiment with him in his first campaign. Captain Ormond afterwards made an unfortunate marriage — that is, a marriage without a fortune — his friends would not see him or his wife — he was soon in debt, and in great distress. He was obliged to leave his wife and go to India. She had then one child at nurse in an Irish cabin. She died soon afterwards. Sir Ulick O’Shane took the child, that had been left at nurse, into his own house. From the time it was four years old, little Harry Ormond became his darling and grew up his favourite. Sir Ulick’s fondness, however, had not extended to any care of his education — quite the contrary; he had done all he could to spoil him by the most injudicious indulgence, and by neglect of all instruction or discipline. Marcus had been sent to school and college; but Harry Ormond, meantime, had been let to run wild at home: the gamekeeper, the huntsman, and a cousin of Sir Ulick, who called himself the King of the Black Islands, had had the principal share in his education. Captain Ormond, his father, was not heard of for many years; and Sir Ulick always argued, that there was no use in giving Harry Ormond the education of an estated gentleman, when he was not likely to have an estate. Moreover, he prophesied that Harry would turn out the cleverest man of the two; and in the progress of the two boys towards manhood Sir Ulick had shown a strange sort of double and inconsistent vanity in his son’s acquirements, and in the orphan Harry’s natural genius. Harry’s extremely warm, generous, grateful temper, delighted Sir Ulick; but he gloried in the superior polish of his own son. Harry Ormond grew up with all the faults that were incident to his natural violence of passions, and that might necessarily be expected from his neglected and deficient education. His devoted gratitude and attachment to his guardian father, as he called Sir Ulick, made him amenable in an instant, even in the height and tempest of his passions, to whatever Sir Ulick desired; but he was ungovernable by most other people, and rude even to insolence, where he felt tyranny or suspected meanness. Miss Black and he were always at open war; to Lady O’Shane he submitted, though with an ill grace; yet he did submit, for his guardian’s sake, where he himself only was concerned; but most imprudently and fiercely he contended upon every occasion where Marcus, when aggrieved, had declined contending with his mother-in-law.
Upon the present occasion the two youths had been long engaged to dine with, and keep the birthday of, Mr. Cornelius O’Shane, the King of the Black Islands — next to Sir Ulick the being upon earth to whom Harry Ormond thought himself most obliged, and to whom he felt himself most attached. This he had represented to Lady O’Shane, and had earnestly requested that, as the day for the intended dance was a matter of indifference to her, it might not be fixed on this day; but her ladyship had purposely made it a trial of strength, and had insisted upon their returning at a certain hour. She knew that Sir Ulick would be much vexed by their want of punctuality on this occasion, where the Annalys were concerned, though, in general, punctuality was a virtue for which he had no regard.
Sir Ulick had finished his cup of coffee. “Miss Black, send away the tea-things — send away all these things,” cried he. “Young ladies, better late than never, you know — let’s have dancing now; clear the decks for action.”
The young ladies started from their seats immediately. All was now in happy motion. The servants answered promptly — the tea-things retired in haste — tables rolled away — chairs swung into the back-ground — the folding-doors of the dancing-room were thrown open — the pyramids of wax-candles in the chandeliers (for this was ere argands were on earth) started into light — the musicians tuning, screwing, scraping, sounded, discordant as they were, joyful notes of preparation.
“But where’s my son — where’s Marcus?” said Sir Ulick, drawing Lady O’Shane aside. “I don’t see him any where.”
“No,” said Lady O’Shane; “you know that he would go to dine to-day with that strange cousin of yours, and neither he nor his companion have thought proper to return yet.”
“I wish you had given me a hint,” said Sir Ulick, “and I would have waited; for Marcus ought to lead off with Miss Annaly.”
“Ought— to be sure.” said Lady O’Shane; “but that is no rule for young gentlemen’s conduct. I told both the young gentlemen that we were to have a dance to-night. I mentioned the hour, and begged them to be punctual.”
“Young men are never punctual,” said Sir Ulick; “but Marcus is inexcusable to-night on account of the Annalys.”
Sir Ulick pondered for a moment with an air of vexation, then turning to the musicians, who were behind him, “You four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row, you gentlemen musicians, scrape and tune on a little longer, if you please. Remember you are not ready till I draw on my gloves. Break a string or two, if necessary.”
“We will — we shall — plase your honour.”
“I wish, Lady O’Shane,” continued Sir Ulick in a lower tone, “I wish you had given me a hint of this.”
“Truth to tell, Sir Ulick, I did, I own, conceive from your walk and way, that you were not in a condition to take any hint I could give.”
“Pshaw, my dear, after having known me, I won’t say loved me, a calendar year, how can you be so deceived by outward appearances? Don’t you know that I hate drinking? But when I have these county electioneering friends, the worthy red noses, to entertain, I suit myself to the company, by acting spirits instead of swallowing them, for I should scorn to appear to flinch!”
This was true. Sir Ulick could, and often did, to the utmost perfection, counterfeit every degree of intoxication. He could act the rise, decline, and fall of the drunken man, marking the whole progress, from the first incipient hesitation of reason to the glorious confusion of ideas in the highest state of elevation, thence through all the declining cases of stultified paralytic ineptitude, down to the horizontal condition of preterpluperfect ebriety.
“Really, Sir Ulick, you are so good an actor that I don’t pretend to judge — I can seldom find out the truth from you.”
“So much the better for you, my dear, if you knew but all,” said Sir Ulick, laughing.
“If I knew but all!” repeated her ladyship, with an alarmed look.
“But that’s not the matter in hand at present, my dear.”
Sir Ulick protracted the interval before the opening of the ball as long as he possibly could — but in vain — the young gentlemen did not appear. Sir Ulick drew on his gloves. The broken strings of the violins were immediately found to be mended. Sir Ulick opened the ball himself with Miss Annaly, after making as handsome an apology for his son as the case would admit — an apology which was received by the young lady with the most graceful good-nature. She declined dancing more than one dance, and Sir Ulick sat down between her and Lady Annaly, exerting all his powers of humour to divert them, at the expense of his cousin, the King of the Black Islands, whose tedious ferry, or whose claret, or more likely whose whiskey-punch, he was sure, had been the cause of Marcus’s misdemeanour. It was now near twelve o’clock. Lady O’Shane, who had made many aggravating reflections upon the disrespectful conduct of the young gentlemen, grew restless on another count. The gates were left open for them — the gates ought to be locked! There were disturbances in the country. “Pshaw!” Sir Ulick said. Opposite directions were given at opposite doors to two servants.
“Dempsey, tell them they need not lock the gates till the young gentlemen come home, or at least till one o’clock,” said Sir Ulick.
“Stone,” said Lady O’Shane to her own man in a very low voice, “go down directly, and see that the gates are locked, and bring me the keys.”
Dempsey, an Irishman, who was half drunk, forgot to see or say any thing about it. Stone, an Englishman, went directly to obey his lady’s commands, and the gates were locked, and the keys brought to her ladyship, who put them immediately into her work-table.
Half an hour afterwards, as Lady O’Shane was sitting with her back to the glass-door of the green house, which opened into the ball-room, she was startled by a peremptory tap on the glass behind her; she turned, and saw young Ormond, pale as death, and stained with blood.
“The keys of the gate instantly,” cried he, “for mercy’s sake!”
Lady O’Shane, extremely terrified, had scarcely power to rise. She opened the drawer of the table, and thrust her trembling hand down to the bottom of the silk bag, into which the keys had fallen. Impatient of delay, Ormond pushed open the door, snatched the keys, and disappeared. The whole passed in a few seconds. The music drowned the noise of the opening door, and of the two chairs, which Ormond had thrown down: those who sat near, thought a servant had pushed in and gone out; but, however rapid the movement, the full view of the figure had been seen by Miss Annaly, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room; Sir Ulick was sitting beside her, talking earnestly. Lady Annaly had just retired. “For Heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?” cried he, stopping in the middle of a sentence, on seeing Miss Annaly grow suddenly pale as death. Her eyes were fixed on the door of the green-house; his followed that direction. “Yes,” said he, “we can get out into the air that way — lean on me.” She did so — he pushed his way through the crowd at the bottom of the country dance; and, as he passed, was met by Lady O’Shane and Miss Black, both with faces of horror.
“Sir Ulick, did you see,” pointing to the door, “did you see Mr. Ormond? — There’s blood!”
“There’s mischief, certainly,” said Miss Black. “A quarrel — Mr. Marcus, perhaps.”
“Nonsense! No such thing, you’ll find,” said Sir Ulick, pushing on, and purposely jostling the arm of a servant who was holding a salver of ices, overturning them all; and whilst the surrounding company were fully occupied about their clothes, and their fears, and apologies, he made his way onwards to the green-house — Lady O’Shane clinging to one arm — Miss Annaly supported by the other — Miss Black following, repeating, “Mischief! mischief! you’ll see, sir.”
“Miss Black, open the door, and not another word.”
He edged Miss Annaly on, the moment the door opened, dragged Lady O’Shane after him, pushed Miss Black back as she attempted to follow: but, recollecting that she might spread the report of mischief, if he left her behind, drew her into the green-house, locked the door, and led Miss Annaly out into the air.
“Bring salts! water! something, Miss Black — follow me, Lady O’Shane.”
“When I’m hardly able — your wife! Sir Ulick, you might,” said Lady O’Shane, as she tottered on, “you might, I should have thought—”
“No time for such thoughts, my dear,” interrupted he. “Sit down on the steps — there, she is better now — now what is all this?”
“I am not to speak,” said Miss Black.
Lady O’Shane began to say how Mr. Ormond had burst in, covered with blood, and seized the keys of the gates.
“The keys!” But he had no time for that thought. “Which way did he go?”
“I don’t know; I gave him the keys of both gates.”
The two entrances were a mile asunder. Sir Ulick looked for footsteps on the grass. It was a fine moonlight night. He saw footsteps on the path leading to the gardener’s house. “Stay here, ladies, and I will bring you intelligence as soon as possible.”
“This way, Sir Ulick — they are coming,” said Miss Annaly, who had now recovered her presence of mind.
Several persons appeared from a turn in the shrubbery, carrying some one on a hand-barrow — a gentleman on horseback, with a servant and many persons walking. Sir Ulick hastened towards them; the gentleman on horseback spurred his horse and met him.
“Marcus! — is it you? — thank God! But Ormond — where is he, and what has happened?”
The first sound of Marcus’s voice, when he attempted to answer, showed that he was not in a condition to give a rational account of any thing. His servant followed, also much intoxicated. While Sir Ulick had been stopped by their ineffectual attempts to explain, the people who were carrying the man on the hand-barrow came up. Ormond appeared from the midst of them. “Carry him on to the gardener’s house,” cried he, pointing the way, and coming forward to Sir Ulick. “If he dies, I am a murderer!” cried he.
“Who is he?” said Sir Ulick.
“Moriarty Carroll, please your honour,” answered several voices at once.
“And how happened it?” said Sir Ulick.
“The long and the short of it, sir,” said Marcus, as well as he could articulate, “the fellow was insolent, and we cut him down — and if it were to do again, I’d do it again with pleasure.”
“No, no! you won’t say so, Marcus, when you are yourself,” said Ormond. “Oh! how dreadful to come to one’s senses all at once, as I did — the moment after I had fired that fatal shot — the moment I saw the poor fellow stagger and fall —”
“It was you, then, that fired at him,” interrupted Sir Ulick.
“Yes, oh! yes!” said he, striking his forehead: “I did it in the fury of passion.”
Then Ormond, taking all the blame upon himself, and stating what had passed in the strongest light against himself, gave this account of the matter. After having drunk too much at Mr. Cornelius O’Shane’s, they were returning from the Black Islands, and afraid of being late, they were galloping hard, when at a narrow part of the road they were stopped by some cars. Impatient of the delay, they abused the men who were driving them, insisting upon their getting out of the way faster than they could. Moriarty Carroll made some answer, which Marcus said was insolent; and inquiring the man’s name, and hearing it was Carroll, said all the Carrolls were bad people — rebels. Moriarty defied him to prove that— and added some expressions about tyranny, which enraged Ormond. This part of the provocation Ormond did not state, but merely said he was thrown into a passion by some observation of Moriarty’s; and first he lifted his whip to give the fellow a horsewhipping. Moriarty seized hold of the whip, and struggled to wrest it from his hand; Ormond then snatched a pistol from his holster, telling Moriarty he would shoot him, if he did not let the whip go. Moriarty, who was in a passion himself, struggled, still holding the whip. Ormond cocked the pistol, and before he was aware he had done so, the pistol accidentally went off — the ball entered Moriarty’s breast. This happened within a quarter of a mile of Castle Hermitage. The poor fellow bled profusely; and, in assisting to lift him upon the hand-barrow, Ormond was covered with blood, as has been already described.
“Have you sent for a surgeon?” said Sir Ulick, coolly.
“Certainly — sent off a fellow on my own horse directly. Sir, will you come on to the gardener’s house; I want you to see him, to know what you’ll think. If he die, I am a murderer,” repeated Ormond.
This horrible idea so possessed his imagination, that he could not answer or hear any of the farther questions that were asked by Lady O’Shane and Miss Black; but after gazing upon them with unmeaning eyes for a moment in silence, walked rapidly on: as he was passing by the steps of the green-house, he stopped short at the sight of Miss Annaly, who was still sitting there. “What’s the matter?” said he, in a tone of great compassion, going close up to her. Then, recollecting himself, he hurried forward again.
“As I can be of no use — unless I can be of any use,” said Miss Annaly, “I will, now that I am well enough, return — my mother will wonder what has become of me.”
“Sir Ulick, give me the key of the conservatory, to let Miss Annaly into the ball-room.”
“Miss Annaly does not wish to dance any more to-night, I believe,” said Sir Ulick.
“Dance — oh! no.”
“Then, without exciting observation, you can all get in better at the back door of the house, and Miss Annaly can go up the back stairs to Lady Annaly’s room, without meeting any one; and you, Lady O’Shane,” added he, in a low voice, “order up supper, and say nothing of what has passed. Miss Black, you hear what I desire — no gossiping.”
To get to the back door they had to walk round the house, and in their way they passed the gardener’s. The surgeon had just arrived.
“Go on, ladies, pray,” said Sir Ulick; “what stops you?”
“’Tis I stop the way, Sir Ulick,” said Lady O’Shane, “to speak a word to the surgeon. If you find the man in any dangerous way, for pity’s sake don’t let him die at our gardener’s — indeed, the bringing him here at all I think a very strange step and encroachment of Mr. Ormond’s. It will make the whole thing so public — and the people hereabouts are so revengeful — if any thing should happen to him, it will be revenged on our whole family — on Sir Ulick in particular.”
“No danger — nonsense, my dear.”
But now this idea had seized Lady O’Shane, it appeared to her a sufficient reason for desiring to remove the man even this night. She asked why he could not be taken to his own home and his own people; she repeated, that it was very strange of Mr. Ormond to take such liberties, as if every thing about Castle Hermitage was quite at his disposal. One of the men who had carried the hand-barrow, and who was now standing at the gardener’s door, observed, that Moriarty’s people lived five miles off. Ormond, who had gone into the house to the wounded man, being told what Lady O’Shane was saying, came out; she repeated her words as he re-appeared. Naturally of sudden violent temper, and being now in the highest state of suspense and irritation, he broke out, forgetful of all proper respect. Miss Black, who was saying something in corroboration of Lady O’Shane’s opinion, he first attacked, pronouncing her to be an unfeeling, canting hypocrite: then, turning to Lady O’Shane, he said that she might send the dying man away, if she pleased; but that if she did, he would go too, and that never while he existed would he enter her ladyship’s doors again.
Ormond made this threat with the air of a superior to an inferior, totally forgetting his own dependent situation, and the dreadful circumstances in which he now stood.
“You are drunk, young man! My dear Ormond, you don’t know what you are saying,” interposed Sir Ulick.
At his voice, and the kindness of his tone, Ormond recollected himself. “Forgive me,” said he, in a very gentle tone. “My head certainly is not — Oh! may you never feel what I have felt this last hour! If this man die — Oh! consider.”
“He will not die — he will not die, I hope — at any rate, don’t talk so loud within hearing of these people. My dear Lady O’Shane, this foolish boy — this Harry Ormond is, I grant, a sad scapegrace, but you must bear with him for my sake. Let this poor wounded fellow remain here — I won’t have him stirred to-night — we shall see what ought to be done in the morning. Ormond, you forgot yourself strangely towards Lady O’Shane — as to this fellow, don’t make such a rout about the business; I dare say he will do very well: we shall hear what the surgeon says. At first I was horribly frightened — I thought you and Marcus had been quarrelling. Miss Annaly, are not you afraid of staying out? Lady O’Shane, why do you keep Miss Annaly? Let supper go up directly.”
“Supper! ay, every thing goes on as usual,” said Ormond, “and I—”
“I must follow them in, and see how things are going on, and prevent gossiping, for your sake, my boy,” resumed Sir Ulick, after a moment’s pause. “You have got into an ugly scrape. I pity you from my soul — I’m rash myself. Send the surgeon to me when he has seen the fellow. Depend upon me, if the worst come to the worst, there’s nothing in the world I would not do to serve you,” said Sir Ulick: “so keep up your spirits, my boy — we’ll contrive to bring you through — at the worst, it will only be manslaughter.”
Ormond wrung Sir Ulick’s hand — thanked him for his kindness; but repeated, “it will be murder — it will be murder — my own conscience tells me so! If he die, give me up to justice.”
“You’ll think better of it before morning,” said Sir Ulick, as he left Ormond.
The surgeon gave Ormond little comfort. After extracting the bullet, and examining the wound, he shook his head — he had but a bad opinion of the case; and when Ormond took him aside, and questioned him more closely, he confessed that he thought the man would not live — he should not be surprised if he died before morning. The surgeon was obliged to leave him to attend another patient; and Ormond, turning all the other people out of the room, declared he would sit up with Moriarty himself. A terrible night it was to him. To his alarmed and inexperienced eyes the danger seemed even greater than it really was, and several times he thought his patient expiring, when he was faint from loss of blood. The moments in which Ormond was occupied in assisting him were the least painful. It was when he had nothing left to do, when he had leisure to think, that he was most miserable; then the agony of suspense, and the horror of remorse, were felt, till feeling was exhausted; and he would sit motionless and stupified, till he was wakened again from this suspension of thought and feeling by some moan of the poor man, or some delirious startings. Toward morning the wounded man lay easier; and as Ormond was stooping over his bed to see whether he was asleep, Moriarty opened his eyes, and fixing them on Ormond, said, in broken sentences, but so as very distinctly to be understood, “Don’t be in such trouble about the likes of me — I’ll do very well, you’ll see — and even suppose I wouldn’t — not a friend I have shall ever prosecute — I’ll charge ’em not — so be easy — for you’re a good heart — and the pistol went off unknownst to you — I’m sure there was no malice — let that he your comfort. It might happen to any man, let alone gentleman — don’t take on so. Only think of young Mr. Harry sitting up the night with me! — Oh! if you’d go now and settle yourself yonder on t’other bed, sir — I’d be a grate dale asier, and I don’t doubt but I’d get a taste of sleep myself — while now wid you standing over or forenent me, I can’t close an eye for thinking of you, Mr. Harry.”
Ormond immediately threw himself upon the other bed, that he might relieve Moriarty’s feelings. The good nature and generosity of this poor fellow increased Ormond’s keen sense of remorse. As to sleeping, for him it was impossible; whenever his ideas began to fall into that sort of confusion which precedes sleep, suddenly he felt as if his heart were struck or twinged, and he started with the recollection that some dreadful thing had happened, and wakened to the sense of guilt and all its horrors. Moriarty now lying perfectly quiet and motionless, and Ormond not hearing him breathe, he was struck with the dread that he had breathed his last. A cold tremor came over Ormond — he rose in his bed, listening in acute agony, when to his relief he at last distinctly heard Moriarty breathing strongly, and soon afterwards (no music was ever so delightful to Ormond’s ear) heard him begin to breathe loudly, as if asleep. The morning light dawned soon afterwards, and the crowing of a cock was heard, which Ormond feared might waken him; but the poor man slept soundly through all these usual noises: the heaving of the bed-clothes over his breast went on with uninterrupted regularity. The gardener and his wife softly opened the door of the room, to inquire how things were going on; Ormond pointed to the bed, and they nodded, and smiled, and beckoned to him to come out, whispering that a taste of the morning air would do him good. He suffered them to lead him out, for he was afraid of debating the point in the room with the sleeping patient. The good people of the house, who had known Harry Ormond from a child, and who were exceedingly fond of him, as all the poor people in the neighbourhood were, said every thing they could think of upon this occasion to comfort him, and reiterated about a hundred times their prophecies, that Moriarty would be as sound and good a man as ever in a fortnight’s time.
“Sure, when he’d take the soft sleep he couldn’t but do well.”
Then perceiving that Ormond listened to them only with faint attention, the wife whispered to her husband, “Come off to our work, Johnny — he’d like to be alone — he’s not equal to listen to our talk yet — it’s the surgeon must give him hope — and he’ll soon be here, I trust.”
They went to their work, and left Ormond standing in the porch. It was a fine morning — the birds were singing, and the smell of the honeysuckle with which the porch was covered, wafted by the fresh morning air, struck Ormond’s senses, but struck him with melancholy.
“Every thing in nature is cheerful except myself! Every thing in this world going on just the same as it was yesterday — but all changed for me! — within a few short hours — by my own folly, my own madness! Every animal,” thought he, as his attention was caught by the house dog, who was licking his hand, and as his eye fell upon the hen and chickens, who were feeding before the door, “every animal is happy — and innocent! But if this man die — I shall be a murderer.”
This thought, perpetually recurring, so oppressed him, that he stood motionless, till he was roused by the voice of Sir Ulick O’Shane.
“Well, Harry Ormond, how is it with you, my boy? — The fellow’s alive, I hope?”
“Alive — Thank Heaven! — yes; and asleep.”
“Give ye joy — it would have been an ugly thing — not but what we could have brought you through: I’d go through thick and thin, you know, for you, as if it were for my own son. But Lady O’Shane,” said Sir Ulick, changing his tone, and with a face of great concern, “I must talk to you about her — I may as well speak now, since it must be said.”
“I am afraid,” said Ormond, “that I spoke too hastily last night: I beg your pardon.”
“Nay, nay, put me out of the question: you may do what you please with me — always could, from the time you were four years old; but, you know, the more I love any body, the more Lady O’Shane hates them. The fact is,” continued Sir Ulick, rubbing his eyes, “that I have had a weary night of it — Lady O’Shane has been crying and whining in my ears. She says I encourage you in being insolent, and so forth: in short, she cannot endure you in the house any longer. I suspect that sour one” (Sir Ulick, among his intimates, always designated Miss Black in this manner) “puts her up to it. But I will not give up my own boy — I will take it with a high hand. Separations are foolish things, as foolish as marriages; but I’d sooner part with Lady O’Shane at once than let Harry Ormond think I’d forsake him, especially in awkward circumstances.”
“That, Sir Ulick, is what Harry Ormond can never think of you. He would be the basest, the most suspicious, the most ungrateful — But I must not speak so loud,” continued he, lowering his voice, “lest it should waken Moriarty.” Sir Ulick drew him away from the door, for Ormond was cool enough at this moment to have common sense.
“My dear guardian-father, allow me still to call you by that name,” continued Ormond, “believe me, your kindness is too fully — innumerable instances of your affection now press upon me, so that — I can’t express myself; but depend upon it, suspicion of your friendship is the last that could enter my mind: I trust, therefore, you will do me the same sort of justice, and never suppose me capable of ingratitude — though the time is come when we must part.”
Ormond could hardly pronounce the word.
“Part!” repeated Sir Ulick: “no, by all the saints, and all the devils in female form!”
“I am resolved,” said Ormond, “firmly resolved on one point — never to be a cause of unhappiness to one who has been the source of so much happiness to me: I will no more be an object of contention between you and Lady O’Shane. Give her up rather than me — Heaven forbid! I the cause of separation! — never — never! I am determined, let what will become of me, I will no more be an inmate of Castle Hermitage.”
Tears started into Ormond’s eyes; Sir Ulick appeared much affected, and in a state of great embarrassment and indecision.
He could not bear to think of it — he swore it must not be: then he gradually sunk to hoping it was not necessary, and proposing palliatives and half measures. Moriarty must be moved to-day — sent to his own friends. That point he had, for peace sake, conceded to her ladyship, he said; but he should expect, on her part, that after a proper, a decent apology from Ormond, things might still be accommodated and go on smoothly, if that meddling Miss Black would allow them.
In short he managed so, that whilst he confirmed the young man in his resolution to quit Castle Hermitage, he threw all the blame on Lady O’Shane; Ormond never doubting the steadiness of Sir Ulick’s affection, nor suspecting that he had any secret motive for wishing to get rid of him.
“But where can you go, my dear boy? — What will you do with yourself? — What will become of you?”
“Never mind — never mind what becomes of me, my dear sir: I’ll find means — I have the use of head and hands.”
“My cousin, Cornelius O’Shane, he is as fond of you almost as I am, and he is not cursed with a wife, and is blessed with a daughter,” said Sir Ulick, with a sly smile.
“Oh! yes,” continued he, “I see it all now: you have ways and means — I no longer object — I’ll write — no, you’d write better yourself to King Corny, for you are a greater favourite with his majesty than I am. Fare ye well — Heaven bless you! my boy,” said Sir Ulick, with warm emphasis. “Remember, whenever you want supplies, Castle Hermitage is your bank — you know I have a bank at my back (Sir Ulick was joined in a banking-house)’— Castle Hermitage is your bank, and here’s your quarter’s allowance to begin with.”
Sir Ulick put a purse into Ormond’s hand, and left him.
But is it natural, is it possible, that this Sir Ulick O’Shane could so easily part with Harry Ormond, and thus “whistle him down the wind to prey at fortune?” For Harry Ormond, surely, if for any creature living, Sir Ulick O’Shane’s affection had shown itself disinterested and steady. When left a helpless infant, its mother dead, its father in India, he had taken the child from the nurse, who was too poor even to feed or clothe it as her own; and he had brought little Harry up at his castle with his own son — as his own son. He had been his darling — literally his spoiled child; nor had this fondness passed away with the prattling, playful graces of the child’s first years — it had grown with its growth. Harry became Sir Ulick’s favourite companion — hunting, shooting, carousing, as he had been his plaything during infancy. On no one occasion had Harry, violent and difficult to manage as he was to others, ever crossed Sir Ulick’s will, or in any way incurred his displeasure. And now, suddenly, without any cause, except the aversion of a wife, whose aversions seldom troubled him in any great degree, is it natural that he should give up Harry Ormond, and suffer him to sacrifice himself in vain for the preservation of a conjugal peace, which Sir Ulick ought to have known could not by such a sacrifice be preserved? Is it possible that Sir Ulick should do this? Is it in human nature?
Yes, in the nature of Sir Ulick O’Shane. Long use had brought him to this; though his affections, perhaps, were naturally warm, he had on many occasions in his life sacrificed them to his scheming imaginations. Necessity the necessity of his affairs, the consequences of his extravagance — had brought him to this: the first sacrifices had not been made without painful struggles; but by degrees his mind had hardened, and his warmth of heart had cooled. When he said or swore in the most cordial manner that he “would do any thing in the world to serve a friend,” there was always a mental reservation of “any thing that does not hurt my own interest, or cross my schemes.”
And how could Harry Ormond hurt his interest, or cross his schemes? or how had Sir Ulick discovered this so suddenly? Miss Annaly’s turning pale was the first cause of Sir Ulick’s change of sentiments towards his young favourite. Afterwards, during the whole that passed, Sir Ulick had watched the impression made upon her — he had observed that it was not for Marcus O’Shane’s safety that she was anxious; and he thought she had betrayed a secret attachment, the commencement of an attachment he thought it, of which she was perhaps herself unconscious. Were such an attachment to be confirmed, it would disappoint Sir Ulick’s schemes: therefore, with the cool decision of a practised schemer, he determined directly to get rid of Ormond. He had no intention of parting with him for ever, but merely while the Annalys were at Castle Hermitage: till his scheme was brought to bear, he would leave Harry at the Black Islands, and he could, he thought, recal him from banishment, and force a reconciliation with Lady O’Shane, and reinstate him in favour, at pleasure.
But is it possible that Miss Annaly, such an amiable and elegant young lady as she is described to be, should feel any attachment, any predilection for such a young man as Ormond; ill-educated, unpolished, with a violent temper, which had brought him early into life into the dreadful situation in which he now stands? And at the moment when, covered with the blood of an innocent man, he stood before her, an object of disgust and horror; could any sentiment like love exist or arise in a well-principled mind?
Certainly not. Sir Ulick’s acquaintance with unprincipled women misled him completely in this instance, and deprived him of his usual power of discriminating character. Harry Ormond was uncommonly handsome; and though so young, had a finely-formed, manly, graceful figure; and his manner, whenever he spoke to women, was peculiarly prepossessing. These personal accomplishments, Sir Ulick thought, were quite sufficient to win any lady’s heart — but Florence Annaly was not to be won by such means: no feeling of love for Mr. Ormond had ever touched her heart, nor even crossed her imagination; none under such circumstances could have arisen in her innocent and well-regulated mind. Sudden terror, and confused apprehension of evil, made her grow very pale at the sight of his bloody apparition at the window of the ball-room. Bodily weakness, for she was not at this time in strong health, must be her apology, if she need any, for the faintness and loss of presence of mind, which Sir Ulick construed into proofs of tender anxiety for the personal fate of this young man. In the scene that followed, horror of his crime, pity for the agony of his remorse, was what she felt — what she strongly expressed to her mother, the moment she reached her apartment that night: nor did her mother, who knew her thoroughly, ever for an instant suspect that in her emotion, there was a mixture of any sentiments but those which she expressed. Both mother and daughter were extremely shocked. They were also struck with regret at the idea, that a young man, in whom they had seen many instances of a generous, good disposition, of natural qualities and talents, which might have made him a useful, amiable, and admirable member of society, should be, thus early, a victim to his own undisciplined passion. During the preceding winter they had occasionally seen something of Ormond in Dublin. In the midst of the dissipated life which he led, upon one or two occasions, of which we cannot now stop to give an account, he had shown that he was capable of being a very different character from that which he had been made by bad education, bad example, and profligate indulgence, or shameful neglect on the part of his guardian.
Immediately after Sir Ulick had left Ormond, the surgeon appeared, and a new train of emotions arose. He had no time to reflect on Sir Ulick’s conduct. He felt hurried on rapidly, like one in a terrible dream. He returned with the surgeon to the wounded man.
Moriarty had wakened, much refreshed from his sleep, and the surgeon confessed that his patient was infinitely better than he had expected to find him. Moriarty evidently exerted himself as much as he possibly could to appear better, that he might calm Ormond’s anxiety, who stood waiting, with looks that showed his implicit faith in the oracle, and feeling that his own fate depended upon the next words that should be uttered. Let no one scoff at his easy faith: at this time Ormond was very young, not yet nineteen, and had no experience, either of the probability, or of the fallacy of medical predictions. After looking very grave and very wise, and questioning and cross-questioning a proper time, the surgeon said it was impossible for him to pronounce any thing decidedly, till the patient should have passed another night; but that if the next night proved favourable, he might then venture to declare him out of immediate danger, and might then begin to hope that, with time and care, he would do well. With this opinion, guarded and dubious as it was, Ormond was delighted — his heart felt relieved of part of the heavy load by which it had been oppressed, and the surgeon was well feed from the purse which Sir Ulick had put into Ormond’s hands. Ormond’s next business was to send a gossoon with a letter to his friend the King of the Black Islands, to tell him all that had passed, and to request an asylum in his dominions. By the time he had finished and despatched his letter, it was eight o’clock in the morning; and he was afraid that before he could receive an answer, it might be too late in the day to carry a wounded man as far as the Black Islands: he therefore accepted the hospitable offer of the village school-mistress, to give him and his patient a lodging for that night. There was indeed no one in the place who would not have done as much for Master Harry. All were in astonishment and sorrow when they heard that he was going to leave the castle; and their hatred to Lady O’Shane would have known no bounds, had they learned that she was the cause of his banishment: but this he generously concealed, and forbade those of his followers or partisans, who had known any thing of what had passed, to repeat what they had heard. It was late in the day before Marcus rose; for he had to sleep off the effects of his last night’s intemperance. He was in great astonishment when he learned that Ormond was really going away; and “could scarcely believe,” as he said repeatedly, “that Harry was so mad, or such a fool. As to Moriarty, a few guineas would have settled the business, if no rout had been made about it. Sitting up all night with such a fellow, and being in such agonies about him — how absurd! What more could he have done, if he had shot a gentleman, or his best friend? But Harry Ormond was always in extremes.”
Marcus, though he had not a very clear recollection of the events of the preceding night, was conscious, however, that he had been much more to blame than Ormond had stated; he had a remembrance of having been very violent, and of having urged Ormond to chastise Moriarty. It was not the first time that Ormond had screened him from blame, by taking the whole upon himself. For this Marcus was grateful to a certain degree: he thought he was fond of Harry Ormond; but he had not for him the solid friendship that would stand the test of adversity, still less would it be capable of standing against any difference of party opinion. Marcus, though he appeared a mild, indolent youth, was violent where his prejudices were concerned. Instead of being governed by justice in his conduct towards his inferiors, he took strong dislikes, either upon false informations, or without sufficient examination of the facts: cringing and flattery easily won his favour; and, on the other hand, he resented any spirit of independence, or even the least contradiction, from an inferior. These defects in his temper appeared more and more in him every year. As he ceased to be a boy, and was called upon to act as a man, the consequences of his actions became of greater importance; but in acquiring more power, he did not acquire more reason, or greater command over himself. He was now provoked with Ormond for being so anxious about Moriarty Carroll, because he disliked the Carrolls, and especially Moriarty, for some slight cause not worth recording. He went to Ormond, and argued the matter with him, but in vain. Marcus resented this sturdiness, and they parted, displeased with each other. Though Marcus expressed in words much regret at his companion’s adhering to the resolution of quitting his father’s house, yet it might be doubted whether, at the end of the conference, these professions were entirely sincere, whatever they might have been at the beginning: he had not a large mind, and perhaps he was not sorry to get rid of a companion who had often rivalled him in his father’s favour, and who might rival him where it was still more his ambition to please. The coldness of Marcus’s manner at parting, and the little difficulty which he felt in the separation, gave exquisite pain to poor Ormond, who, though he was resolved to go, did wish to be regretted, especially by the companion, the friend of his childhood. The warmth of his guardian’s manner had happily deceived him; and to the recollection of this he recurred for comfort at this moment, when his heart ached, and he was almost exhausted with the succession of the painful, violently painful, feelings of the last four-and-twenty hours.
The gossoon who had been sent with the despatch to the King of the Black Islands did not return this day — disappointment upon disappointment. Moriarty, who had exerted himself too much, that he might appear better than he really was, suffered proportionably this night; and so did Ormond, who, never before having been with any person delirious from fever, was excessively alarmed. What he endured cannot be described: it was, however, happy for him that he was forced to bear it all — nothing less could have made a sufficient impression on his mind — nothing less could have been a sufficient warning to set a guard upon the violence of his temper.
In the morning the fever abated: about eight o’clock the patient sunk into a sound sleep; and Ormond, kneeling by his bedside, ardent in devotion as in all his sentiments, gave thanks to Heaven, prayed for Moriarty’s perfect recovery, and vowed with the strongest adjurations that if he might be spared for this offence, if he might be saved from the horror of being a murderer, no passion, no provocation should ever, during the whole future course of his life, tempt him to lift his hand against a fellow-creature.
As he rose from his knees, after making this prayer and this vow, he was surprised to see standing beside him Lady Annaly — she had made a sign to the sick man not to interrupt Ormond’s devotion by any exclamation at her entrance.
“Be not disturbed — let me not feel that I embarrass you, Mr. Ormond,” said she: “I came here not to intrude upon your privacy. Be not ashamed, young gentleman,” continued she, “that I should have witnessed feelings that do you honour, and that interest me in your future fate.”
“Interest Lady Annaly in my future fate! — Is it possible!” exclaimed Ormond: “Is it possible that one of whom I stood so much in awe — one whom I thought so much too good, ever to bestow a thought on — such a one as I am — as I was, even before this fatal —” (his voice failed).
“Not fatal, I hope — I trust,” said Lady Annaly: “this poor man’s looks at this moment assure me that he is likely to do well.”
“True for ye, my lady,” said Moriarty, “I’ll do my best, surely: I’d live through all, if possible, for his sake, let alone my mudther’s, or shister’s, or my own —‘twould be too bad, after; all the trouble he got these two nights, to be dying at last, I and hanting him, may be, whether I would or no — for as to prosecuting, that would never be any way, if I died twenty times over. I sint off that word to my mudthier and shister, with my curse if they’d do other— and only that they were at the fair, and did not get the word, or the news of my little accident, they’d have been here long ago; and the minute they come, I’ll swear ’em not to prosecute, or harbour a thought of revenge again’ him, who had no malice again’ me, no more than a child. And at another’s bidding, more than his own, he drew the trigger, and the pistol went off unknownst, in a passion: so there’s the case for you, my lady.”
Lady Annaly, who was pleased with the poor fellow’s simplicity and generosity in this tragi-comic statement of the case, inquired if she could in any way afford him assistance.
“I thank your ladyship, but Mr. Harry lets me want for nothing.”
“Nor ever will, while I have a farthing I can call my own,” cried Ormond.
“But I hope, Mr. Ormond,” said Lady Annaly, smiling, “that when Moriarty — is not that his name? — regains his strength, to which he seems well inclined, you do not mean to make him miserable and good for nothing, by supporting him in idleness?”
“No, he sha’n’t, my lady — I would not let him be wasting his little substance on me. And did ye hear, my lady, how he is going to lave Castle Hermitage? Well, of all the surprises ever I got! It come upon me like a shot —my shot was nothing to it!”
It was necessary to insist upon Moriarty’s submitting to be silent and quiet; for not having the fear of the surgeon before his eyes, and having got over his first awe of the lady, he was becoming too full of oratory and action. Lady Annaly took Ormond out with her, that she might speak to him of his own affairs.
“You will not, I hope, Mr. Ormond, ascribe it to idle curiosity, but to a wish to be of service, if I inquire what your future plans in life may be?”
Ormond had never formed any, distinctly. “He was not fit for any profession, except, perhaps, the army — he was too old for the navy — he was at present going, he believed, to the house of an old friend, a relation of Sir Ulick, Mr. Cornelius O’Shane.”
“My son, Sir Herbert Annaly, has an estate in this neighbourhood, at which he has never yet resided, but we are going there when we leave Castle Hermitage. I shall hope to see you at Annaly, when you have determined on your plans; perhaps you may show us how we can assist in forwarding them.”
“Is it possible,” repeated Ormond, in unfeigned astonishment, “that your ladyship can be so very good, so condescending, to one who so little deserves it? But I will deserve it in future. If I get over this — interested in my future fate — Lady Annaly!”
“I knew your father many years ago,” said Lady Annaly; “and as his son, I might feel some interest for you; but I will tell you sincerely, that, on some occasions, when we met in Dublin, I perceived traits of goodness in you, which, on your own account, Mr. Ormond, have interested me in your fate. But fate is an unmeaning commonplace — worse than commonplace — word: it is a word that leads us to imagine that we are fated or doomed to certain fortunes or misfortunes in life. I have had a great deal of experience, and from all I have observed, it appears to me, that far the greatest part of our happiness or misery in life depends upon ourselves.”
Ormond stopped short, and listened with the eagerness of one of quick feeling and quick capacity, who seizes an idea that is new to him, and the truth and value of which he at once appreciates. For the first time in his life he heard good sense from the voice of benevolence — he anxiously desired that she should go on speaking, and stood in such an attitude of attentive deference as fully marked that wish.
But at this moment Lady O’Shane’s footman came up with a message from his lady; her ladyship sent to let Lady Annaly know that breakfast was ready. Repeating her good wishes to Ormond she bade him adieu, while he was too much overpowered with his sense of gratitude to return her thanks.
“Since there exists a being, and such a being, interested for me, I must be worth something — and I will make myself worth something more: I will begin from this moment, I am resolved, to improve; and who knows but in the end I may become every thing that is good? I don’t want to be great.”
Though this resolution was not steadily adhered to, though it was for a time counteracted by circumstances, it was never afterwards entirely forgotten. From this period, in consequence of the great and painful impression which had been suddenly made on his mind, and from a few words of sense and kindness spoken to him at a time when his heart was happily prepared to receive them, we may date the commencement of our hero’s reformation and improvement — hero, we say; but certainly never man had more faults than Ormond had to correct, or to be corrected, before he could come up to the received idea of any description of hero. Most heroes are born perfect — so at least their biographers, or rather their panegyrists, would have us believe. Our hero is far from this happy lot; the readers of his story are in no danger of being wearied, at first setting out, with the list of his merits and accomplishments; nor will they be awed or discouraged by the exhibition of virtue above the common standard of humanity — beyond the hope of imitation. On the contrary, most people will comfort and bless themselves with the reflection, that they never were quite so foolish, nor quite so bad, as Harry Ormond.
For the advantage of those who may wish to institute the comparison, his biographer, in writing the life of Ormond, deems it a point of honour to extenuate nothing; but to trace, with an impartial hand, not only every improvement and advance, but every deviation or retrograde movement.
Full of sudden zeal for his own improvement, Ormond sat down at the foot of a tree, determined to make a list of all his faults, and of all his good resolutions for the future. He took out his pencil, and began on the back of a letter the following resolutions, in a sad scrawling hand and incorrect style.
HARRY ORMOND’S GOOD RESOLUTIONS.
Resolved 1st. — That I will never drink more than (blank number of) glasses.
Resolved 2ndly. — That I will cure myself of being passionate.
Resolved 3rdly. — That I will never keep low company.
Resolved. — That I am too fond of flattery — women’s, especially, I like most. To cure myself of that.
Ormond.
Here he was interrupted by the sight of a little gossoon, with a short stick tucked under his arm, who came pattering on bare-foot in a kind of pace indescribable to those who have never seen it — it was something as like walking or running as chanting is to speaking or singing.
“The answer I am from the Black Islands, Master Harry; and would have been back wid you afore nightfall yesterday, only he— King Corny — was at the fair of Frisky — could not write till this morning any way — but has his service to ye, Master Harry, will be in it for ye by half after two with a bed and blanket for Moriarty, he bid me say on account he forgot to put it in the note. In the Sally Cove the boat will be there abow in the big lough, forenent the spot where the fir dale was cut last seraph by them rogues.”
The despatch from the King of the Black Islands was then produced from the messenger’s bosom, and it ran as follows:
“Dear Harry. What the mischief has come over Cousin Ulick to be banishing you from Castle Hermitage? But since he conformed, he was never the same man, especially since his last mis-marriage. But no use moralizing — he was always too much of a courtier for me. Come you to me, my dear boy, who is no courtier, and you’ll be received and embraced with open arms — was I Briareus, the same way — Bring Moriarty Carroll (if that’s his name), the boy you shot, which has given you so much concern — for which I like you the better — and honour that boy, who, living or dying, forbade to prosecute. Don’t be surprised to see the roof the way it is:— since Tuesday I wedged it up bodily without stirring a stick:— you’ll see it from the boat, standing three foot high above the walls, waiting while I’m building up to it — to get attics — which I shall for next to nothing — by my own contrivance. Meantime, good dry lodging, as usual, for all friends at the palace. He shall be well tended for you by Sheelah Dunshaughlin, the mother of Betty, worth a hundred of her! and we’ll soon set him up again with the help of such a nurse, as well as ever, I’ll engage; for I’m a bit of a doctor, you know, as well as every thing else. But don’t let any other doctor, surgeon, or apothecary, be coming after him for your life — for none ever gets a permit to land, to my knowledge, on the Black Islands — to which I attribute, under Providence, to say nothing of my own skill in practice, the wonderful preservation of my people in health — that, and woodsorrell, and another secret or two not to be committed to paper in a hurry — all which I would not have written to you, but am in the gout since four this morning, held by the foot fast — else I’d not be writing, but would have gone every inch of the way for you myself in style, in lieu of sending, which is all I can now do, my six-oared boat, streamers flying, and piper playing like mad — for I would not have you be coming like a banished man, but in all glory, to Cornelius O’Shane, commonly called King Corny— but no king to you, only your hearty old friend.”
“Heaven bless Cornelius O’Shane!” said Harry Ormond to himself, as he finished this letter. “King or no king, the most warm-hearted man on earth, let the other be who he will.”
Then pressing this letter to his heart, he put it up carefully, and rising in haste, he dropped the list of his faults. That train of associations was completely broken, and for the present completely forgotten; nor was it likely to be soon renewed at the Black Islands, especially in the palace, where he was now going to take up his residence. Moriarty was laid on a bed; and was transported, with Ormond, in the six-oared boat, streamers flying, and piper playing, across the lake to the islands. Moriarty’s head ached terribly, but he nevertheless enjoyed the playing of the pipes in his ear, because of the air of triumph it gave Master Harry, to go away in this grandeur, in the face of the country. King Corny ordered the discharge of twelve guns on his landing, which popped one after another gloriously — the hospitable echoes, as Moriarty called them, repeating the sound. A horse, decked with ribands, waited on the shore, with King Corny’s compliments for Prince Harry, as the boy, who held the stirrup for Ormond to mount, said he was instructed to call him, and to proclaim him “Prince Harry” throughout the island, which he did by sound of horn, the whole way they proceeded to the palace — very much to the annoyance of the horse, but all for the greater glory of the prince, who managed his steed to the admiration of the shouting ragged multitude, and of his majesty, who sat in state in his gouty chair at the palace door. He had had himself rolled out to welcome the coming guest.
“By all that’s princely,” cried he, “then, that young Harry Ormond was intended for a prince, he sits ahorse so like myself; and that horse requires a master hand to manage him.”
Ormond alighted.
The gracious, cordial, fatherly welcome, with which he was received, delighted his heart.
“Welcome, prince, my adopted son, welcome to Corny castle — palace, I would have said, only for the constituted authorities of the post-office, that might take exceptions, and not be sending me my letters right. As I am neither bishop nor arch, I have, in their blind eyes or conceptions, no right — Lord help them! — to a temporal palace. Be that as it may, come you in with me, here into the big room — and see! there’s the bed in the corner for your first object, my boy — your wounded chap; and I’ll visit his wound, and fix it and him the first thing for ye, the minute he comes up.”
His majesty pointed to a bed in the corner of a large apartment, whose beautiful painted ceiling and cornice, and fine chimney-piece with caryatides of white marble, ill accorded with the heaps of oats and corn, the thrashing cloth and flail, which lay on the floor.
“It is intended for a drawing-room, understand,” said King Corny; “but till it is finished, I use it for a granary or a barn, when it would not be a barrack-room or hospital, which last is most useful at present.”
To this hospital Moriarty was carefully conveyed. Here, notwithstanding his gout, which affected only his feet, King Corny dressed Moriarty’s wound with exquisite tenderness and skill; for he had actually acquired knowledge and address in many arts, with which none could have suspected him to have been in the least acquainted.
Dinner was soon announced, which was served up with such a strange mixture of profusion and carelessness, as showed that the attendants, who were numerous and ill-caparisoned, were not much used to gala-days. The crowd, who had accompanied Moriarty into the house, were admitted into the dining-room, where they stood round the king, prince, and Father Jos the priest, as the courtiers, during the king’s supper at Versailles, surrounded the King of France. But these poor people were treated with more hospitality than were the courtiers of the French king; for as soon as the dishes were removed, their contents were generously distributed among the attendant multitude. The people blest both king and prince, “wishing them health and happiness long to reign over them;” and bowing suitably to his majesty the king, and to his reverence the priest, without standing upon the order of their going, departed.
“And now, Father Jos,” said the king to the priest, “say grace, and draw close, and let me see you do justice to my claret, or the whiskey punch if you prefer; and you, Prince Harry, we will set to it regally as long as you please.”
“Till tea-time,” thought young Harry. “Till supper-time,” thought Father Jos. “Till bed-time,” thought King Corny.
At tea-time young Harry, in pursuance of his resolution the first, rose, but he was seized instantly, and held down to his chair. The royal command was laid upon him “to sit still and be a good fellow.” Moreover the door was locked — so that there was no escape or retreat.
The next morning when he wakened with an aching head, he recollected with disgust the figure of Father Jos, and all the noisy mirth of the preceding night. Not without some self-contempt, he asked himself what had become of his resolution.
“The wounded boy was axing for you, Master Harry,” said the girl, who came in to open the shutters.
“How is he?” cried Harry, starting up.
“He is but soberly; [Footnote: But soberly — not very well, or in good spirits.] he got the night but middling; he concaits he could not sleep becaase he did not get a sight of your honour afore he’d settle — I tell him ’tis the change of beds, which always hinders a body to sleep the first night.”
The sense of having totally forgotten the poor fellow — the contrast between this forgetfulness and the anxiety and contrition of the two preceding nights, actually surprised Ormond: he could hardly believe that he was one and the same person. Then came excuses to himself: “Gratitude — common civility — the peremptoriness of King Corny — his passionate temper, when opposed on this tender point — the locked door — and two to one: in short, there was an impossibility in the circumstances of doing otherwise than what he had done. But then the same impossibility — the same circumstances — might recur the next night, and the next, and so on: the peremptory temper of King Corny was not likely to alter, and the moral obligation of gratitude would continue the same; so that at nineteen was he to become, from complaisance, what his soul and body abhorred — an habitual drunkard? And what would become of Lady Annaly’s interest in his fate or his improvement?”
The two questions were not of equal importance, but our hero was at this time far from having any just proportion in his reasoning: it was well he reasoned at all. The argument as to the obligation of gratitude — the view he had taken of the never-ending nature of the evil, which must be the consequence of beginning with weak complaisance — above all, the feeling that he had so lost his reason as not only to forget Moriarty, but to have been again incapable of commanding his passions, if any thing had occurred to cross his temper, determined Ormond to make a firm resistance on the next occasion that should occur: it did occur the very next night. After a dinner given to his chief tenants and the genteel people of the islands — a dinner in honour and in introduction of his adopted son, King Corny gave a toast “to the Prince presumptive,” as he now styled him — a bumper toast. Soon afterwards he detected daylight in Harry’s glass, and cursing it properly, he insisted on flowing bowls and full glasses. “What! are you Prince presumptuous?” cried he, with a half angry and astonished look. “Would you resist and contradict your father and king at his own table after dinner? Down with the glass!”
Farther and steady resistance changed the jesting tone and half angry look of King Corny into sullen silence, and a black portentous brow of serious displeasure. After a decent time of sitting, the bottle passing him without farther importunity, Ormond rose — it was a hard struggle; for in the face of his benefactor he saw reproach and rage bursting from every feature: still he moved on towards the door. He heard the words “sneaking off sober! — let him sneak!”
Ormond had his hand on the lock of the door — it was a bad lock, and opened with difficulty.
“There’s gratitude for you! No heart, after all — I mistook him.”
Ormond turned back, and firmly standing and firmly speaking, he said, “You did not mistake me formerly, sir; but you mistake me now! — Sneaking! — Is there any man here, sober or drunk,” continued be, impetuously approaching the table, and looking round full in every face — “is there any man here dares to say so but yourself? — You, you, my benefactor, my friend; you have said it — think it you did not — you could not, but say it you may — You may say what you will to Harry Ormond, bound to you as he is — bound hand and foot and heart I— Trample on him as you will —you may. No heart! Oblige me, gentlemen, some of you,” cried he, his anger rising and his eyes kindling as he spoke, “some of you gentlemen, if any of you think so, oblige me by saying so. No gratitude, sir!” turning from them, and addressing himself to the old man, who held an untasted glass of claret as he listened —“No gratitude! Have not I? — Try me, try me to the death — you have tried me to the quick of the heart, and I have borne it.”
He could bear it no longer: he threw himself into the vacant chair, flung out his arms on the table, and laying his face down upon them, wept aloud. Cornelius O’Shane pushed the wine away. “I’ve wronged the boy grievously,” said he; and forgetting the gout, he rose from his chair, hobbled to him, and leaning over him, “Harry, ’tis I— look up, my own boy, and say you forgive me, or I’ll never forgive myself. That’s well,” continued he, as Harry looked up and gave him his hand; “that’s well! — you’ve taken the twinge out of my heart worse than the gout: not a drop of gall or malice in your nature, nor ever was, more than in the child unborn. But see, I’ll tell you what you’ll do now, Harry, to settle all things — and lest the fit should take me ever to be mad with you on this score again. You don’t choose to drink more than’s becoming? — Well, you’se right, and I’m wrong. ‘Twould be a burning shame of me to make of you what I have made of myself. We must do only as well as we can. But I will ensure you against the future; and before we take another glass — there’s the priest — and you, Tom Ferrally there, step you for my swearing book. Harry Ormond, you shall take an oath against drinking more glasses than you please evermore, and then you’re safe from me. But stay — you are a heretic. Phoo! what am I saying? ’twas seeing the priest put that word heretic in my head — you’re not a catholic, I mean. But an oath’s an oath, taken before priest or parson — an oath, taken how you will, will operate. But stay, to make all easy, ’tis I’ll take it.”
“Against drinking, you! King Corny!” said Father Jos, stopping his hand, “and in case of the gout in your stomach?”
“Against drinking! do you think I’d perjure myself? No! But against pressing him to it — I’ll take my oath I’ll never ask him to drink another glass more than he likes.”
The oath was taken, and King Corny concluded the ceremony by observing that, after all, there was no character he despised more than that of a sot. But every gentleman knew that there was a wide and material difference betwixt a gentleman who was fond of his bottle, and that unfortunate being, an habitual drunkard. For his own part, it was his established rule never to go to bed without a proper quantity of liquor under his belt; but he defied the universe to say he was ever known to be drunk.
At a court where such ingenious casuistry prevailed, it was happy for our hero that an unqualifying oath now protected his resolution.
In the middle of the night our hero was wakened by a loud bellowing. It was only King Corny in a paroxysm of the gout. His majesty was naturally of a very impatient temper, and his maxims of philosophy encouraged him to the most unrestrained expression of his feelings — the maxims of his philosophy — for he had read, though in most desultory manner, and he had thought often deeply, and not seldom justly. The turns of his mind, and the questions he asked, were sometimes utterly unexpected. “Pray, now,” said he to Harry, who stood beside his bed, “now that I’ve a moment’s ease — did you ever hear of the Stoics that the bookmen talk of? and can you tell me what good any one of them ever got by making it a point to make no noise, when they’d be punished and racked with pains of body or mind? Why, I will tell you all they got — all they got was no pity: who would give them pity that did not require it? I could bleed to death in a bath, as well as the best of them, if I chose it; or chew a bullet if I set my teeth to it, with any man in a regiment — but where’s the use? nature knows best, and she says roar!” And he roared — for another twinge seized him.
Nature said sleep! several times this night to Harry, and to every body in the palace; but they did not sleep, they could not, while the roaring continued: so all had reason to rejoice, and Moriarty in particular, when his majesty’s paroxysm was past. Harry was in a sound sleep at twelve o’clock the next day, when he was summoned into the royal presence. He found King Corny sitting at ease in his bed, and that bed strewed over with a variety of roots and leaves, weeds and plants. An old woman was hovering over the fire, stirring something in a black kettle. “Simples these — of wonderful unknown power,” said King Corny to Harry, as he approached the bed; “and I’ll engage you don’t know the name even of the half of them.”
Harry confessed his ignorance.
“No shame for you — was you as wise as King Solomon himself, you might not know them, for he did not, nor couldn’t, he that had never set his foot a grousing on an Irish bog. Sheelah, come you over, and say what’s this?”
The old woman now came to assist at this bed of botany, and with spectacles slipping off, and pushed on her nose continually, peered over each green thing, and named in Irish “every herb that sips the dew.”
Sheelah was deeper in Irish lore than King Corny could pretend to be: but then he humbled her with the “black hellebore of the ancients,” and he had, in an unaccountable manner, affected her imagination by talking of “that famous howl of narcotic poisons, which that great man Socrates drank off.” Sheelah would interrupt herself in the middle of a sentence, and curtsy if she heard him pronounce the name of Socrates — and at the mention of the bowl, she would regularly sigh, and exclaim, “Lord save us! — But that was a wicked bowl.”
Then after a cast of her eyes up to heaven, and crossing herself on the forehead, she would take up her discourse at the word where she had left off.
King Corny set to work compounding plasters and embrocations, preparing all sorts of decoctions of roots and leaves, famous through the country. And while he directed and gesticulated from his bed, the old woman worked over the fire in obedience to his commands; sometimes, however, not with that “prompt and mute obedience,” which the great require.
It was fortunate for Moriarty that King Corny, not having the use of his nether limbs, could not attend even in his gouty chair to administer the medicines he had made, and to see them fairly swallowed. Sheelah, whose conscience was easy on this point, contented herself with giving him a strict charge to “take every bottle to the last drop.” All she insisted upon for her own part was, that she must tie the charm round his neck and arm. She would fain have removed the dressings of the wound to substitute plasters of her own, over which she had pronounced certain prayers or incantations; but Moriarty, who had seized and held fast one good principle of surgery, that the air must never be let into the wound, held mainly to this maxim, and all Sheelah could obtain was permission to clap on her charmed plaster over the dressing.
In due time, or, as King Corny triumphantly observed, in “a wonderful short period,” Moriarty got quite well, long before the king’s gout was cured, even with the assistance of the black hellebore of the ancients. King Corny was so well pleased with his patient for doing such credit to his medical skill, that he gave him and his family a cabin, and spot of land, in the islands — a cabin near the palace; and at Harry’s request made him his wood-ranger and his gamekeeper — the one a lucrative place, the other a sinecure.
Master Harry — Prince Harry — was now looked up to as a person all-powerful with the master; and petitions and requests to speak for them, to speak just one word, came pouring from all sides: but however enviable his situation as favourite and prince presumptive might appear to others, it was not in all respects comfortable to himself.
Formerly, when a boy, in his visits to the Black Islands, he used to have a little companion of whom he was fond — Dora — Corny’s daughter. Missing her much, he inquired from her father where she was gone, and when she was likely to return.
“She is gone off to the continent— to the continent of Ireland, that is; but not banished for any misdemeanour. You know,” said King Corny, “’tis generally considered as a punishment in the Black Islands to be banished to Ireland. A threat of that kind, I find sufficient to bring the most refractory and ill-disposed of my subjects, if I had any of that description, to rason in the last resort; but to that ultimate law I have not recourse, except in extreme cases; I understand my business of king too well, to wear out either shame or fear; but you are no legislator yet, Prince Harry. So what was you asking me about Dora? She is only gone a trip to the continent, to her aunt’s, by the mother’s side, Miss O’Faley, that you never saw, to get the advantage of a dancing-master, which myself don’t think she wants — a natural carriage, with native graces, being, in my unsophisticated opinion, worth all the dancing-master’s positions, contortions, or drillings; but her aunt’s of a contrary opinion, and the women say it is essential. So let ’em put Dora in the stocks, and punish her as they will, she’ll be the gladder to get free, and fly back from their continent to her own Black Islands, and to you and me — that is, to me — I ax your pardon, Harry Ormond; for you know, or I should tell you in time, she is engaged already to White Connal, of Glynn — from her birth. That engagement I made with the father over a bowl of punch — I promised — I’m afraid it was a foolish business — I promised if ever he, Old Connal, should have a son, and I should have a daughter, his son should marry my daughter. I promised, I say — I took my oath: and then Mrs. Connal that was, had, shortly after, not one son, but two — and twins they were: and I had — unluckily — ten years after, the daughter, which is Dora — and then as she could not marry both, the one twin was to be fixed on for her, and that was him they call White Connal — so there it was. Well, it was altogether a rash act! So you’ll consider her as a married woman, though she is but a child — it was a rash act, between you and I— for Connal’s not grown up a likely lad for the girl to fancy; but that’s neither here nor there: no, my word is passed — when half drunk, may be — but no matter — it must be kept sober — drunk or sober, a gentleman must keep his word —à fortiori a king —à fortiori King Corny. See! was there this minute no such thing as parchment, deed, stamp, signature, or seal in the wide world, when once Corny has squeezed a friend’s hand on a bargain, or a promise, ’tis fast, was it ever so much against me —’tis as strong to me as if I had squeezed all the lawyers’ wax in the creation upon it.”
Ormond admired the honourable sentiment; but was sorry there was any occasion for it — and he sighed; but it was a sigh of pity for Dora: not that he had ever seen White Connal, or known any thing of him — but White Connal did not sound well; and her father’s avowal, that it had been a rash engagement, did not seem to promise happiness to Dora in this marriage.
From the time he had been a boy, Harry Ormond had been in the habit of ferrying over to the Black Islands whenever Sir Ulick could spare him. The hunting and shooting, and the life of lawless freedom he led on the Islands, had been delightful. King Corny, who had the command not only of boats, and of guns, and of fishing-tackle, and of men, but of carpenters’ tools, and of smiths’ tools, and of a lathe, and of brass and ivory, and of all the things that the heart of boy could desire, had appeared to Harry, when he was a boy, the richest, the greatest, the happiest of men — the cleverest, too — the most ingenious: for King Corny had with his own hands made a violin and a rat-trap; and had made the best coat, and the best pair of shoes, and the best pair of boots, and the best hat; and had knit the best pair of stockings, and had made the best dunghill in his dominions; and had made a quarter of a yard of fine lace, and had painted a panorama. No wonder that King Corny had been looked up to, by the imagination of childhood, as “a personage high as human veneration could look.”
But now, although our hero was still but a boy in many respects, yet in consequence of his slight commerce with the world, he had formed some comparisons, and made some reflections. He had heard, accidentally, the conversation of a few people of common sense, besides the sly, witty, and satirical remarks of Sir Ulick, upon cousin Cornelius; and it had occurred to Harry to question the utility and real grandeur of some of those things, which had struck his childish imagination. For example, he began to doubt whether it were worthy of a king or a gentleman to be his own shoemaker, hatter, and tailor; whether it were not better managed in society, where these things are performed by different tradesmen: still the things were wonderful, considering who made them, and under what disadvantages they were made: but Harry having now seen and compared Corny’s violin with other violins, and having discovered that so much better could be had for money, with so much less trouble, his admiration had a little decreased. There were other points relative to external appearance, on which his eyes had been opened. In his boyish days, King Corny, going out to hunt with hounds and horn, followed with shouts by all who could ride, and all who could run, King Corny hallooing the dogs, and cheering the crowd, appeared to him the greatest, the happiest of mankind.
But he had since seen hunts in a very different style, and he could no longer admire the rabble rout.
Human creatures, especially young human creatures, are apt to swing suddenly from one extreme to the other, and utterly to despise that which they had extravagantly admired. From this propensity Ormond was in the present instance guarded by affection and gratitude. Through all the folly of his kingship, he saw that Cornelius O’Shane was not a person to be despised. He was indeed a man of great natural powers, both of body and mind — of inventive genius, energy, and perseverance, which might have attained the greatest objects; though from insufficient knowledge, and self-sufficient perversity, they had wasted themselves on absurd or trivial purposes.
There was a strong contrast between the characters of Sir Ulick and his cousin Cornelius O’Shane. They disliked and despised each other: differing as far in natural disposition as the subtle and the bold, their whole course through life, and the habits contracted during their progress, had widened the original difference.
The one living in the world, and mixing continually with men of all ranks and character, had, by bending easily, and being all things to all men, won his courtier-way onwards and upwards to the possession of a seat in parliament, and the prospect of a peerage.
The other, inhabiting a remote island, secluded from all men but those over whom he reigned, caring for no earthly consideration, and for no human opinion but his own, had for himself and by himself, hewed out his way to his own objects, and then rested, satisfied —
“Lord of himself, and all his (little) world his own.”
One morning, when Harry Ormond was out shooting, and King Corny, who had recovered tolerably from the gout, was reinstated in his arm-chair in the parlour, listening to Father Jos reading “The Dublin Evening Post,” a gossoon, one of the runners of the castle, opened the door, and putting in his curly red head and bare feet, announced, in all haste, that he “just seen Sir Ulick O’Shane in the boat, crossing the lake for the Black Islands.”
“Well, breathless blockhead! and what of that?” said King Corny —“did you never see a man in a boat before?”
“I did, plase your honour.”
“Then what is there extraordinary?”
“Nothing at all, plase your honour, only — thought your honour might like to know.”
“Then you thought wrong, for I neither like it, nor mislike it. I don’t care a rush about the matter — so take yourself down stairs.”
“’Tis a long time,” said the priest, as the gossoon closed the door after him, “’tis a longer time than he ought, since Sir Ulick O’Shane paid his respects here, even in the shape of a morning visit.”
“Morning visit!” repeated Mrs. Betty Dunshaughlin, the housekeeper, who entered the room, for she was a privileged person, and had les grandes et les petites entrées in this palace— Morning visit! — are you sure, Father Jos — are you clear he isn’t come intending to stay dinner?”
“What, in the devil’s name, Betty, does it signify?” said the king.
“About the dinner!”
“What about it?” said Corny, proudly: “whether he comes, stays, or goes, I’ll not have a scrap, or an iota of it changed,” added he in a despotic tone.
“Wheugh.’” said Betty, “one would not like to have a dinner of scraps — for there’s nothing else to-day for him.”
“Then if there is nothing else, there can be nothing else,” said the priest, very philosophically.
“But when strangers come to dine, one would make a bit of an exertion, if one could,” said Betty.
“It’s his own fault to be a stranger,” said Father Jos, watching his majesty’s clouding countenance; then whispering to Betty, “that was a faulty string you touched upon, Mrs. Betty; and can’t you make out your dinner without saying any thing?”
“A person may speak in this house, I suppose, besides the clergy, Father Jos,” said Mrs. Betty, under her breath.
Then looking out of the window, she added, “He’s half-way over the lake, and he’ll make his own apologies good, I’ll engage, when he comes in; for he knows how to speak for himself as well as any gentleman — and I don’t doubt but he’ll get my Micky made an exciseman, as he promised to; and sure he has a good right — Isn’t he a cousin of King Corny’s? wherefore I’d wish to have all things proper. So I’ll step out and kill a couple of chickens — won’t I?”
“Kill what you please,” said King Corny; “but without my warrant, nothing killed or unkilled shall come up to my table this day — and that’s enough. No more reasoning — quit the subject and the room, Betty.”
Betty quitted the room; but every stair, as she descended to the kitchen, could bear witness that she did not quit the subject; and for an hour afterwards, she reasoned against the obstinacy and folly of man, and the chorus in the kitchen moralized, in conformity and commiseration — in vain.
Meantime Father Jos, though he regretted the exertions which Mrs. Betty might discreetly have made in favour of a good dinner, was by no means, as he declared, a friend or fauterer of Sir Ulick O’Shane — how could he, when Sir Ulick had recanted? — The priest looked with horror upon the apostasy — the King with contempt upon the desertion of his party. “Was he sincere any way, I’d honour him,” said Cornelius, “or forgive him; but, not to be ripping up old grievances when there’s no occasion, can’t forgive the way he is at this present double-dealing with poor Harry Ormond — cajoling the grateful heart, and shirking the orphan boy that he took upon him to patronise. Why there I thought nobly of him, and forgave him all his sins, for the generous protection he afforded the son of his friend.”
“Had Captain Ormond, the father, no fortune?” asked the priest.
“Only a trifle of three hundred a year, and no provision for the education or maintenance of the boy. Ulick’s fondness for him, more than all, showed him capable of the disinterested touch; but then to belie his own heart — to abandon him he bred a favourite, just when the boy wants him most — Oh! how could he? And all for what? To please the wife he hates: that can’t be — that’s only the ostensible — but what the raal rason is I can’t guess. No matter — he’ll soon tell us.”
“Tell us! Oh! no,” said the priest, “he’ll keep his own secret.”
“He’ll let it out, I’ll engage, trying to hide it,” said Corny: “like all cunning people, he woodcocks— hides his head, and forgets his body can be seen. But hark! he is coming up. Tommy!” said he, turning to a little boy of five years old, Sheelah’s grandchild, who was playing about in the room, “hand, me that whistle you’re whistling with, till I see what’s the matter with it for you.”
King Corny seemed lost in examination of the whistle when Sir Ulick entered the room; and after receiving and seating him with proud courtesy, he again returned to the charge, blowing through the whistle, earnestly dividing his observation between Sir Ulick and little Tommy, and asking questions, by turns, about the whistle, and about all at Castle Hermitage.
“Where’s my boy? Where’s Harry Ormond?” was the first leading question Sir Ulick asked.
“Harry Ormond’s out shooting, I believe, somewhere or somehow, taking his pleasure, as I hope he will long, and always as long as he likes it, at the Black Islands; at least as long as I live.”
Sir Ulick branched off into hopes of his cousin Cornelius’s living long, very long; and in general terms, that were intended to avoid committing himself, or pinning himself to any thing, he protested that he must not be robbed of his boy, that he had always, with good reason, been jealous of Harry’s affection for King Corny, and that he could not consent to let his term of stay at the Black Islands be either as long as Harry himself should like, or during what he hoped would be the life of his cousin, Cornelius O’Shane.
“There’s something wrong, still, in this whistle. Why, if you loved him so, did you let him go when you had him?” said Corny.
“He thought it necessary, for domestic reasons,” replied Sir Ulick.
“Continental policy, that is; what I never understood, nor never shall,” said Corny. “But I don’t inquire any farther. If you are satisfied with yourself, we are all satisfied, I believe.”
“Pardon me, I cannot be satisfied without seeing Harry this morning, for I’ve a little business with him — will you have the goodness to send for him?”
Father Jos, who, from the window, saw Harry’s dog snuffing along the path to the wood, thought he could not be far from the house, and went to make inquiries; and now when Sir Ulick and King Corny were left alone together, a dialogue — a sort of single combat, without any object but to try each other’s powers and temper — ensued between them; in which the one on the offensive came on with a tomahawk, and the other stood on the defensive parrying with a polished blade of Damascus; and sometimes, when the adversary was off his guard, making a sly cut at an exposed part.
“What are you so busy about?” said Sir Ulick.
“Mending the child’s toy,” said Cornelius. “A man must be doing something in this world.”
“But a man of your ingenuity! ’tis a pity it should be wasted, as I have often said, upon mere toys.”
“Toys of one sort or other we are all taken up with through life, from the cradle to the grave. By-the-bye, I give you joy of your baronetage. I hope they did not make you pay, now, too much in conscience for that poor tag of nobility.”
“These things are not always matters of bargain and sale — mine was quite an unsolicited honour, a mark of approbation and acceptance of my poor services, and as such, gratifying; — as to the rest, believe me, it was not, if I must use so coarse an expression, paid for.”
“Not paid for — what, then, it’s owing for? To be paid for still? Well, that’s too hard, after all you’ve done for them. But some men have no manner of conscience. At least, I hope you paid the fees.”
“The fees, of course — but we shall never understand one another,” said Sir Ulick.
“Now what will be the next title or string you look forward to, Ulysses, may I ask? Is it to be Baron Castle Hermitage, or to get a riband, or a garter, or a thistle, or what? — A thistle! What asses some men are!”
What savages some men are, thought Sir Ulick: he walked to the window, and looking out, hoped that Harry Ormond would soon make his appearance. “You are doing, or undoing, a great deal here, cousin Cornelius, I see, as usual.”
“Yes, but what I am doing, stand or fall, will never be my undoing — I am no speculator. How do your silver mines go on, Sir Ulick? I hear all the silver mines in Ireland turn out to be lead.”
“I wish they did,” said Sir Ulick, “for then we could turn all our lead to gold. Those silver mines certainly did not pay — I’ve a notion you found the same with your reclaimed bog here, cousin Cornelius — I understand that after a short time it relapses, and is worse than ever, like most things pretending to be reclaimed.”
“Speak for yourself, there, Sir Ulick,” said Cornelius; “you ought to know, certainly, for some thirty years ago, I think you pretended to be a reclaimed rake.”
“I don’t remember it,” said Sir Ulick.
“I do, and so would poor Emmy Annaly, if she was alive, which it’s fortunate for her she is not (broken-hearted angel, if ever there was one, by wedlock! and the only one of the Annalys I ever liked),” said Cornelius to himself, in a low leisurely voice of soliloquy. Then resuming his conversation tone, and continuing his speech to Sir Ulick, “I say you pretended thirty years ago, I remember, to be a reformed rake, and looked mighty smooth and plausible — and promised fair that the improvement was solid, and was to last for ever and a day. But six months after marriage comes a relapse, and the reclaimed rake’s worse than ever. Well, to be sure, that’s in favour of your opinion against all things pretending to be reclaimed. But see, my poor bog, without promising so well, performs better; for it’s six years, instead of six months, that I’ve seen no tendency to relapse. See, the cattle upon it speak for themselves; an honest calf won’t lie for any man.”
“I give you joy of the success of your improvements. I admire, too, your ploughing team and ploughing tackle,” said Sir Ulick, with an ironical smile. “You don’t go into any indiscreet expense for farming implements or prize cattle.”
“No,” said Cornelius, “I don’t prize the prize cattle; the best prize a man can get, and the only one worth having, is that which he must give himself, or not get, and of which he is the best judge at all sasons.”
“What prize, may I ask?”
“You may ask, and I’ll answer — the prize of success; and, success to myself, I have, it.”
“And succeeding in all your ends by such noble means must be doubly gratifying — and is doubly commendable and surprising,” said Sir Ulick.
“May I ask — for it’s my turn now to play ignoramus — may I ask, what noble means excites this gratuitous commendation and surprise?”
“I commend, in the first place, the economy of your ploughing tackle — hay ropes, hay traces, and hay halters — doubly useful and convenient for harness and food.”
Corny replied, “Some people I know, think the most expensive harness and tackle, and the most expensive ways of doing every thing, the best; but I don’t know if that is the way for the poor to grow rich — it may be the way for the rich to grow poor: we are all poor people in the Black Islands, and I can’t afford, or think it good policy, to give the example of extravagant new ways of doing old things.”
“’Tis a pity you don’t continue the old Irish style of ploughing by the tail,” said Sir Ulick.
“That is against humanity to brute bastes, which, without any sickening palaver of sentiment, I practise. Also, it’s against an act of parliament, which I regard sometimes — that is, when I understand them; which, the way you parliament gentlemen draw them up, is not always particularly intelligible to plain common sense; and I have no lawyers here, thank Heaven! to consult: I am forced to be legislator, and lawyer, and ploughman, and all, you see, the best I can for myself.”
He opened the window, and called to give some orders to the man, or, as he called him, the boy — a boy of sixty — who was ploughing.
“Your team, I see, is worthy of your tackle,” pursued Sir Ulick —“A mule, a bull, and two lean horses. I pity the foremost poor devil of a horse, who must starve in the midst of plenty, while the horse, bull, and even mule, in a string behind him, are all plucking and munging away at their hay ropes.”
Cornelius joined in Sir Ulick’s laugh, which shortened its duration.
“’Tis comical ploughing, I grant,” said he, “but still, to my fancy, any thing’s better and more profitable nor the tragi-comic ploughing you practise every sason in Dublin.”
“I?” said Sir Ulick.
“Ay, you and all your courtiers, ploughing the half acre [Footnote: Ploughing the half acre. The English reader will please to inquire the meaning of this phrase from any Irish courtier.] continually, pacing up and down that Castle-yard, while you’re waiting in attendance there. Every one to his taste, but —
‘If there’s a man on earth I hate,
Attendance and dependence be his fate.’”
“After all, I have very good prospects in life,” said Sir Ulick.
“Ay, you’ve been always living on prospects; for my part, I’d rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect.”
“Cornelius, what are you doing here to the roof of your house?” said Sir Ulick, striking off to another subject. “What a vast deal of work you do contrive to cut out for yourself.”
“I’d rather cut it out for myself than have any body to cut it out for me,” said Cornelius.
“Upon my word, this will require all your extraordinary ingenuity, cousin.”
“Oh, I’ll engage I’ll make a good job of it, in my sense of the word, though not in yours; for I know, in your vocabulary, that’s only a good job where you pocket money and do nothing; now my good jobs never bring me in a farthing, and give me a great deal to do into the bargain.”
“I don’t envy you such jobs, indeed,” said Sir Ulick; “and are you sure that at last you make them good jobs in any acceptation of the term?”
“Sure! a man’s never sure of any thing in this world, but of being abused. But one comfort, my own conscience, for which I’ve a trifling respect, can’t reproach me; since my jobs, good or bad, have cost my poor country nothing.”
On this point Sir Ulick was particularly sore, for he had the character of being one of the greatest jobbers in Ireland. With a face of much political prudery, which he well knew how to assume, he began to exculpate himself. He confessed that much public money had passed through his hands; but he protested that none of it had stayed with him. No man, who had done so much for different administrations, had been so ill paid.
“Why the deuce do you work for them, then? You won’t tell me it’s for love — Have you got any character by it? — if you haven’t profit, what have you? I would not let them make me a dupe, or may be something worse, if I was you,” said Cornelius, looking him full in the face.
“Savage!” said Sir Ulick again to himself. The tomahawk was too much for him — Sir Ulick felt that it was fearful odds to stand fencing according to rule with one who would not scruple to gouge or scalp, if provoked. Sir Ulick now stood silent, smiling forced smiles, and looking on while Cornelius played quite at his ease with little Tommy, blew shrill blasts through the whistle, and boasted that he had made a good job of that whistle any way.
Harry Ormond, to Sir Ulick’s great relief, now appeared. Sir Ulick advanced to meet him with an air of cordial friendship, which brought the honest flush of pleasure and gratitude into the young man’s face, who darted a quick look at Cornelius, as much as to say, “You see you were wrong — he is glad to see me — he is come to see me.”
Cornelius said nothing, but stroked the child’s head, and seemed taken up entirely with him; Sir Ulick spoke of Lady O’Shane, and of his hopes that prepossessions were wearing off. “If Miss Black were out of the way, things would all go right; but she is one of the mighty good — too good ladies, who are always meddling with other people’s business, and making mischief.”
Harry, who hated her, that is, as much as he could hate any body, railed at her vehemently, saying more against her than he thought, and concluded by joining in Sir Ulick’s wish for her departure from Castle Hermitage, but not with any view to his own return thither: on that point he was quite resolute and steady. He would never, he said, be the cause of mischief. Lady O’Shane did not like him — why, he did not know, and had no right to inquire — and was too proud to inquire, if he had a right. It was enough that her ladyship had proved to him her dislike, and refused him protection at his utmost need: he should never again sue for her hospitality. He declared that Sir Ulick should no more be disquieted by his being an inmate at Castle Hermitage.
Sir Ulick became more warm and eloquent in dissuading him from this resolution, the more he perceived that Ormond was positively fixed in his determination.
The cool looker-on all the time remarked this, and Cornelius was convinced that he had from the first been right in his own opinion, that Sir Ulick was “shirking the boy.”
“And where’s Marcus, sir? would not he come with you to see us?” said Ormond.
“Marcus is gone off to England. He bid me give you his kindest love: he was hurried, and regretted he could not come to take leave of you; but he was obliged to go off with the Annalys, to escort her ladyship to England, where he will remain this year, I dare say. I am much concerned to say, that poor Lady Annaly and Miss Annaly —” Sir Ulick cleared his throat, and gave a suspicious look at Ormond.
This glance at Harry, the moment Sir Ulick pronounced the words Miss Annaly, first directed aright the attention of Cornelius.
“Lady Annaly and Miss Annaly! are they ill? What’s the matter, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Harry with great anxiety; but pronouncing both the ladies’ names precisely in the same tone, and with the same freedom of expression.
Sir Ulick took breath. “Neither of the ladies are ill — absolutely ill; but they have both been greatly shocked by accounts of young Annaly’s sudden illness. It is feared an inflammation upon his lungs, brought on by violent cold — his mother and sister left us this morning — set off for England to him immediately. Lady Annaly thought of you, Harry, my boy — you must be a prodigious favourite — in the midst of all her affliction, and the hurry of this sudden departure, this morning: she gave me a letter for you, which I determined to deliver with my own hands.”
While he spoke, Sir Ulick, affecting to search for the letter among many in his pocket, studied with careless intermitting glances our young hero’s countenance, and Cornelius O’Shane studied Sir Ulick’s: Harry tore open the letter eagerly, and coloured a good deal when he saw the inside.
“I have no business here reading that boy’s secrets in his face,” cried Cornelius O’Shane, raising himself on his crutches —“I’ll step out and look at my roof. Will you come, Sir Ulick, and see how the job goes on?” His crutch slipped as he stepped across the hearth — Harry ran to him: “Oh, sir, what are you doing? You are not able to walk yet without me — why are you going? Secrets did you say?” (The words recurred to his ear.) “I have no secrets — there’s no secrets in this letter — it’s only — the reason I looked foolish was that here’s a list of my own faults, which I made like a fool, and dropped like a fool — but they could not have fallen into better or kinder hands than Lady Annaly’s.”
He offered the letter and its enclosure to Cornelius and Sir Ulick. Cornelius drew back. “I don’t want to see the list of your faults, man,” said he: “do you think I haven’t them all by heart already? and as to the lady’s letter, while you live never show a lady’s letter.”
Sir Ulick, without ceremony, took the letter, and in a moment satisfying his curiosity that it was merely a friendly note, returned it and the list of his faults to Harry, saying. “If it had been a young lady’s letter, I am sure you would not have shown it to me, Harry, nor, of course, would I have looked at it. But I presumed that a letter from old Lady Annaly could only be, what I see it is, very edifying.”
“Old Lady Annaly, is it?” cried Cornelius: “oh! then there’s no indiscretion, young man, in the case. You might as well scruple about your mother’s letter, if you had one; or your mother’s-in-law, which, to be sure, you’ll have, I hope, in due course of nature.”
At the sound of the words mother-in-law, a cloud passed over Sir Ulick’s brow, not unnoticed by the shrewd Cornelius; but the cloud passed away quickly, after Sir Ulick had darted another reconnoitring glance on Harry’s open unconscious countenance.
“All’s safe,” said Sir Ulick to himself, as he took leave.
“Woodcocked! that he has — as I foresaw he would,” cried King Corny, the moment his guest had departed. “Woodcocked! if ever man did, by all that’s cunning!”
King Corny sat for some minutes after Sir Ulick’s departure perfectly still and silent, leaning both hands and his chin on his crutch. Then, looking up at Harry, he exclaimed, “What a dupe you are! but I like you the better for it.”
“I am glad you like me the better, at all events,” said Harry; “but I don’t think I am a dupe.”
“No — if you did, you would not be one: so you don’t see that it was and is Sir Ulick, and not her ladyship, that wanted and wants to get rid of you?”
No, Harry did not see this, and would not be persuaded of it. He defended his guardian most warmly; he was certain of Sir Ulick’s affection; he was sure Sir Ulick was incapable of acting with such duplicity.
His majesty repeated, at every pause, “You are a dupe; but I like you the better for it. And,” added he, “you don’t — blind buzzard! as your want of conceit makes you, for which I like you the better, too — you don’t see the reason why he banished you from Castle Hermitage — you don’t see that he is jealous of your rivalling that puppy, Marcus, his son.”
“Rivalling Marcus in what, or how?”
“With whom? boy, is the question you should ask; and in that case the answer is — Dunce, can’t you guess now? — Miss Annaly.”
“Miss Annaly!” repeated Harry with genuine surprise, and with a quick sense of inferiority and humiliation. “Oh, sir, you would not be so ill-natured as to make a jest of me! — I know how ignorant, how uninformed, what a raw boy I am. Marcus has been educated like a gentleman.”
“More shame for his father that couldn’t do the same by you when he was about it.”
“But Marcus, sir — there ought to be a difference — Marcus is heir to a large fortune — I have nothing. Marcus may hope to marry whoever he pleases.”
“Ay, whoever he pleases; and who will that be, if women are of my mind?” muttered Corny. “I’ll engage, if you had a mind to rival him —”
“Rival him! the thought of rivalling my friend never entered my head.”
“But is he your friend?” said Cornelius.
“As to that, I don’t know: he was my friend, and I loved him sincerely — warmly — he has cast me off — I shall never complain — never blame him directly or indirectly; but don’t let me be accused or suspected unjustly — I never for one instant had the treachery, presumption, folly, or madness, to think of Miss Annaly.”
“Nor she of you, I suppose, you’ll swear?”
“Nor she of me! assuredly not, sir,” said Harry, with surprise at the idea. “Do you consider what I am — and what she is?”
“Well, I am glad they are gone to England out of the way!” said Cornelius.
“I am very sorry for that,” said Harry; “for I have lost a kind friend in Lady Annaly — one who at least I might have hoped would have become my friend, if I had deserved it.”
“Might have hoped! — would have become!— That’s a friend in the air, who may never be found on earth. If you deserved it! — Murder! — who knows how that might turn out —if— I don’t like that kind of subjunctive mood tenure of a friend. Give me the good imperative mood, which I understand — be my friend — at once — or not at all — that’s my mood. None of your if friends for me, setting out with a proviso and an excuse to be off; and may be when you’d call upon ’em at your utmost need, ‘Oh! I said if you deserve it — Lie there like a dog.’ Now, what kind of a friend is that? If Lady Annaly is that sort, no need to regret her. My compliments to her, and a good journey to England — Ireland well rid of her! and so are you, too, my boy!”
“But, dear sir, how you have worked yourself up into a passion against Lady Annaly for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing — I’ve good rason to dislike the woman. What business had she, because she’s an old woman and you a young man, to set up preaching to you about your faults? I hate prachers, feminine gender, especially.”
“She is no preacher, I assure you, sir.”
“How dare you tell me that — was not her letter very edifying? Sir Ulick said.”
“No, sir; it was very kind — will you read it?”
“No, sir, I won’t; I never read an edifying letter in my life with my eyes open, nor never will — quite enough for me that impertinent list of your faults she enclosed you.”
“That list was my own, not hers, sir: I dropped it under a tree.”
“Well, drop it into the fire now, and no more about it. Pray, after all, Harry, for curiosity’s sake, what faults have you?”
“Dear sir, I thought you told me you knew them by heart.”
“I always forget what I learn by heart; put me in mind, and may be I’ll recollect as you go on.”
“Well, sir, in the first place, I am terribly passionate.”
“Passionate! true; that is Moriarty you are thinking of; and I grant you, that had like to have been a sad job — you had a squeak for your life there, and I pitied you as if it had been myself; for I know what it is after one of them blind rages is over, and one opens one’s eyes on the wrong one has done — and then such a cursed feel to be penitent in vain — for that sets no bones. You were blind drunk that night, and that was my fault; but my late vow has prevented the future, and Moriarty’s better in the world than ever he was.”
“Thanks to your goodness, sir.” “Oh! I wasn’t thinking of my goodness — little enough that same; but to ease your conscience, it was certainly the luckiest turn ever happened him the shot he got, and so he says himself. Never think of that more in the way of penitence.”
“In the way of reformation though, I hope, I shall all my life,” said Harry. “One comfort — I have never been in a passion since.”
“But, then, a rasonable passion’s allowable: I wouldn’t give a farthing for a man that couldn’t be in a passion on a proper occasion. I’m passionate myself, rasonably passionate, and I like myself the better for it.”
“I thought you said just now you often repented.”
“Oh! never mind what I said just now— mind what I’m saying now. Isn’t a red heat that you can see, and that warms you, better than a white heat that blinds you? I’d rather a man would knock me down than stand smiling at me, as cousin Ulick did just now, when I know he could have kilt me; he is not passionate — he has the command of himself — every feature under the courtier’s regimen of hypocrisy. Harry Ormond, don’t set about to cure yourself of your natural passions — why, this is rank methodism, all!”
“Methodism, sir?”
“Methodism, sir! — don’t contradict or repeat me — methodism, that the woman has brought you to the brink of, and I warn you from it! I did not know till now that your Lady Annaly was such a methodist — no methodist shall ever darken my doors, or lighten them either, with their new lights. New lights! new nonsense! — for man, woman, or beast. But enough of this, and too much, Harry. Prince Harry, pull that bell a dozen times for me this minute, till they bring out my old horse.”
Before it was possible that any one could have come up stairs, the impatient monarch, pointing with his crutch, added, “Run to the head of the stairs, Prince Harry dear, and call and screech to them to make no delay; and I want you out with me; so get your horse, Harry.”
“But, sir — is it possible — are you able?”
“I am able, sir, possible or not,” cried King Corny, starting up on his crutches. “Don’t stand talking to me of possibilities, when ’tis a friend I am going to serve, and that friend as dear as yourself. Aren’t you at the head of the stairs yet? Must I go and fall down them myself?”
To prevent this catastrophe, our young hero ran immediately and ordered the horses: his majesty mounted, or rather was mounted, and they proceeded to one of the prettiest farms in the Black Islands. As they rode to it, he seemed pleased by Harry’s admiring, as he could, with perfect truth, the beauty of the situation.
“And the land — which you are no judge of yet, but you will — is as good as it is pretty,” said King Corny, “which I am glad of for your sake, Prince Harry; I won’t have you, like that donny English prince or king, they nicknamed Lackland. — No: you sha’n’t lack land while I have it to let or give. I called you prince — Prince of the Black Islands — and here’s your principality. Call out my prime minister, Pat Moore. I sent him across the bog to meet us at Moriarty’s. Here he is, and Moriarty along with him to welcome you. Patrick, give Prince Harry possession — with sod and twig. Here’s the kay from my own hand, and I give you joy. Nay, don’t deny me the pleasure — I’ve a right to it. No wrong to my daughter, if that’s what you are thinking of — a clear improvement of my own — and she will have enough without it. Besides, her betrothed White Connal is a fat grazier, who will make her as rich as a Jew; and any way she is as generous as a princess herself. But if it pains you so, and weighs you down, as I see it does, to be under any obligation — you shall be under none in life. You shall pay me rent for it, and you shall give it up whenever you please. Well! we’ll settle that between ourselves,” continued his majesty; “only take possession, that’s all I ask. But I hope,” added he, “before we’ve lived a year, or whatever time it is till you arrive at years of discretion, you’ll know me well enough, and love me well enough, not to be so stiff about a trifle, that’s nothing between friend and friend — let alone the joke of king and prince, dear Harry.”
The gift of this principality proved a most pernicious, nearly a fatal, gift to the young prince. The generosity, the delicacy, with which it was made, a delicacy worthy of the most polished, and little to have been expected from the barbarian mock-monarch, so touched our young hero’s heart, so subjected his grateful spirit to his benefactor, that he thenceforth not only felt bound to King Corny for life, but prone to deem every thing he did or thought, wisest, fittest, best.
When he was invested with his petty principality, it was expected of him to give a dinner and a dance to the island: so he f gave a dinner and a dance, and every body said he was a fine fellow, and had the spirit of a prince. “King Corny, God bless him! couldn’t go astray in his choice of a favourite — long life to him and Prince Harry! and no doubt there’d be fine hunting, and shooting, and coursing continually. Well, was not it a happy thing for the islands, when Harry Ormond first set foot on them? From a boy ’twas asy to see what a man he’d be. Long may he live to reign over us!”
The taste for vulgar praise grew by what it fed upon. Harry was in great danger of forgetting that he was too fond of flattery, and too fond of company — not the best. He excused himself to himself, by saying that companions of some kind or other he must have, and he was in a situation where good company was not to be had. Then Moriarty Carroll was gamekeeper, and Moriarty Carroll was always out hunting or shooting with him, and he was led by kind and good feelings to be more familiar and free with this man than he would have been with any other in the same rank of life. The poor fellow was ardently attached to him, and repeated, with delight, all the praises he heard of Master Harry, through the Islands. The love of popularity seized him — popularity on the lowest scale! To be popular among the unknown, unheard-of inhabitants of the Black Islands — could this be an object to any man of common sense, any one who had lived in civilized society, and who had had any thing like the education of a gentleman? The fact, argue about it as you will — the fact was as is here stated; and let those who hear it with a disdainful smile recollect that whether in Paris, London, or the Black Islands, the mob are, in all essential points, pretty nearly the same.
It happened about this time that Betty Dunshaughlin was rummaging in her young lady’s work-basket for some riband, “which she knew she might take,” to dress a cap that was to be hung upon a pole as a prize, to be danced for at the pattern, [Footnote: Patron, probably — an entertainment held in honour of the patron saint. A festive meeting, similar to a wake in England.] to be given next Monday at Ormond Vale, by Prince Harry. Prince Harry was now standing by, giving some instructions about the ordering of the entertainment; Betty, in the mean time, pursued her own object of the riband, and as she emptied the basket in haste, threw out a book, which Harry, though not much at this time addicted to reading, snatched impatiently, eager to know what book it was: it was one he had often heard of — often intended to read some time or other, but somehow or other he had never had time: and now he was in the greatest possible hurry, for the hounds were out. But when once he had opened the book, he could not shut it: he turned over page after page, peeped at the end, the beginning, and the middle, then back to the beginning; was diverted by the humour — every Irishman loves humour; delighted with the wit — what Irishman is not? And his curiosity was so much raised by the story, his interest and sympathy so excited for the hero, that he read on, standing for a quarter of an hour, fixed in the same position, while Betty held forth unheard, about cap, supper, and pattern. At last he carried off the book to his own room, that he might finish it in peace; nor did he ever stop till he came to the end of the volume. The story not finishing there, and breaking off in a most interesting part, he went in search of the next volume, but that was not to be found. His impatience was ravenous.
“Mercy, Master Harry,” cried Mrs. Betty, “don’t eat one up! I know nothing at-all-at-all about the book, and I’m very sorry I tumbled it out of the basket. That’s all there is of it to be had high or low — so don’t be tormenting me any more out of my life for nothing.”
But having seized upon her, he refused to let her go, and protested that he would continue to be the torment of her life, till she should find the other volume. Betty, when her memory was thus racked, put her hand to her forehead, and recollected that in the apple-room there was a heap of old books. Harry possessed himself of the key of the apple-room, tossed over the heap of tattered mouldy books, and at last found the precious volume. He devoured it eagerly — nor was it forgotten as soon as finished. As the chief part of the entertainment depended on the characters, it did not fade from his imagination. He believed the story to be true, for it was constructed with unparalleled ingenuity, and developed with consummate art. The character which particularly interested him was that of the hero, the more peculiarly, because he saw, or fancied that he saw, a resemblance to his own; with some differences, to be sure — but young readers readily assimilate and identify themselves with any character, the leading points of which resemble their own, and in whose general feelings they sympathize. In some instances, Harry, as he read on, said to himself, “I would not — I could not have done so and so.” But upon the whole, he was charmed by the character — that of a warm-hearted, generous, imprudent young man, with little education, no literature, governed more by feeling than by principle, never upon any occasion reasoning, but keeping right by happy moral instincts; or when going wrong, very wrong, forgiven easily by the reader and by his mistress, and rewarded at the last with all that love and fortune can bestow, in consideration of his being “a very fine fellow.”
Closing the book, Harry Ormond resolved to be what he admired — and, if possible, to shine forth an Irish Tom Jones. For this purpose he was not at all bound to be a moral gentleman, nor, as he conceived, to be a gentleman at all — not, at least, in the commencement of his career: he might become accomplished at any convenient period of his life, and become moral at the end of it, but he might begin by being an accomplished — blackguard. Blackguard is a harsh word; but what other will express the idea? Unluckily, the easiest points to be imitated in any character are not always the best; and where any latitude is given to conscience, or any precedents are allowed to the grosser passions for their justification, those are the points which are afterwards remembered and applied in practice, when the moral salvo sentences are forgotten, or are at best but of feeble countervailing effect.
At six o’clock on Monday evening the cap — the prize cap, flaming with red ribands from the top of the pole, streamed to the summer air, and delighted the upturned eyes of assembled crowds upon the green below. The dance began, and our popular hero, the delight of all the nymphs, and the envy of all the swains, danced away with one of the prettiest, “smartest,” “most likely-looking” “lasses,” that ever appeared at any former patron. She was a degree more refined in manner, and polished in appearance, than the fair of the Black Islands, for she came from the continent of Ireland — she had the advantage of having been sometimes at the big house at Castle Hermitage — she was the gardener’s daughter — Peggy Sheridan — distinguished among her fellows by a nosegay, such as no other could have procured — distinguished more by her figure and her face than by her nosegay, and more by her air and motions, than even by her figure or her face: she stepped well, and stepped out — she danced an Irish jig to admiration, and she was not averse from admiration; village prudes, perhaps, might call her a village coquette; but let not this suggest a thought derogatory to the reputation of the lively Peggy. She was a well-behaved, well-meaning, innocent, industrious girl — a good daughter, a good sister, and more than one in the neighbourhood thought she would make a good wife. She had not only admirers, but suitors in abundance. Harry Ormond could not think of her as a wife, but he was evidently — more evidently this day than ever before — one of Peggy’s admirers. His heart or his fancy was always warmly susceptible to the charms of beauty; and, never well guarded by prudence, he was now, with his head full of Tom Jones, prone to run into danger himself, and rashly ready to hurry on an innocent girl to her destruction. He was not without hopes of pleasing — what young man of nineteen or twenty is? He was not without chance of success, as it is called, with Peggy — what woman can be pronounced safe, who ventures to extend to a young lover the encouragement of coquettish smiles? Peggy said, “innocent smiles sure,” “meaning nothing;” but they were interpreted to mean something: less would in his present dispositions have excited the hero who imitated Tom Jones to enterprise. Report says that, about this time, Harry Ormond was seen disguised in a slouched hat and trusty [Footnote: Great coat.], wandering about the grounds at Castle Hermitage. Some swear they saw him pretending to dig in the garden; and even under the gardener’s windows, seeming to be nailing up jessamine. Some would not swear, but if they might trust their own eyes, they might verily believe, and could, only that they would not, take their oath to having seen him once cross the lake alone by moonlight. But without believing above half what the world says, candour obliges us to acknowledge, that there was some truth in these scandalous reports. He certainly pursued, most imprudently “pursued the chase of youth and beauty;” nor would he, we fear, have dropped the chase till Peggy was his prey, but that fortunately, in the full headlong career of passion, he was suddenly startled and stopped by coming in view of an obstacle that he could not overleap — a greater wrong than he had foreseen, at least a different wrong, and in a form that made his heart tremble. He reined in his passion, and stood appalled.
In the first hurry of that passion he had seen nothing, heard nothing, understood nothing, but that Peggy was pretty, and that he was in love. It happened one evening that he, with a rose yet unfaded in his hand — a rose which he had snatched from Peggy Sheridan — took the path towards Moriarty Carroll’s cottage. Moriarty, seeing him from afar, came out to meet him; but when he came within sight of the rose, Moriarty’s pace slackened, and turning aside, he stepped out of the path, as if to let Mr. Ormond pass.
“How now, Moriarty?” said Harry. But looking in his face, he saw the poor fellow pale as death.
“What ails you, Moriarty?”
“A pain I just took about my heart,” said Moriarty, pressing both hands to his heart.
“My poor fellow! — Wait! — you’ll be better just now, I hope,” said Ormond, laying his hand on Moriarty’s shoulder.
“I’ll never be better of it, I fear,” said Moriarty, withdrawing his shoulder; and giving a jealous glance at the rose, he turned his head away again.
“I’ll thank your honour to go on, and leave me — I’ll be better by myself. It is not to your honour, above all, that I can open my heart.”
A suspicion of the truth now flashed across Ormond’s mind — he was determined to know whether it was the truth or not.
“I’ll not leave you, till I know what’s the matter,” said he.
“Then none will know that till I die,” said Moriarty; adding, after a little pause, “there’s no knowing what’s wrong withinside of a man till he is opened.”
“But alive, Moriarty, if the heart is in the case only,” said Ormond, “a man can open himself to a friend.”
“Ay, if he had a friend,” said Moriarty. “I’ll beg your honour to let me pass — I am able for it now — I am quite stout again.”
“Then if you are quite stout again, I shall want you to row me across the lake.”
“I am not able for that, sir,” replied Moriarty, pushing past him.
“But,” said Ormond, catching hold of his arm, “aren’t you able or willing to carry a note for me?” As he spoke, Ormond produced the note, and let him see the direction — to Peggy Sheridan.
“Sooner stab me to the heart again,” cried Moriarty, breaking from him.
“Sooner stab myself to the heart then,” cried Ormond, tearing the note to bits. “Look, Moriarty: upon my honour, till this instant, I did not know you loved the girl — from this instant I’ll think of her no more — never more will I see her, hear of her, till she be your wife.”
“Wife!” repeated Moriarty, joy illuminating, but fear as instantly darkening his countenance. “How will that be now?”
“It will be — it shall be — as happily as honourably. Listen to me, Moriarty — as honourably now as ever. Can you think me so wicked, so base, as to say, wife, if — no, passion might hurry me to a rash, but of a base action I’m incapable. Upon my soul, upon the sacred honour of a gentleman —”
Moriarty sighed.
“Look!” continued Ormond, taking the rose from his breast; “this is the utmost that ever passed between us, and that was my fault: I snatched it, and thus — thus,” cried he, tearing the rose to pieces, “I scatter it to the winds of heaven; and thus may all trace of past fancy and folly be blown from remembrance!”
“Amen!” said Moriarty, watching the rose-leaves for an instant, as they flew and were scattered out of sight; then, as Ormond broke the stalk to pieces, and flung it from him, he asked, with a smile, “Is the pain about your heart gone now, Moriarty?”
“No, plase your honour, not gone; but a quite different — better — but worse. So strange with me — I can’t speak rightly — for the pleasure has seized me stronger than the pain.”
“Lean against me, poor fellow. Oh, if I had broken such a heart!”
“Then how wrong I was when I said that word I did!” said Moriarty. “I ask your honour, your dear honour’s pardon on my knees.”
“For what? — For what? — You have done no wrong.”
“No:— but I said wrong — very wrong — when I said stab me to the heart again. Oh, that word again— it was very ungenerous.”
“Noble fellow!” said Ormond.
“Good night to your honour, kindly,” said Moriarty.
“How happy I am now!” said our young hero to himself, as he walked home, “which I never should have been if I had done this wrong.”
A fortunate escape! — yes: but when the escape is owing to good fortune, not to prudence — to good feeling, not to principle — there is no security for the future.
Ormond was steady to his promise toward Moriarty: to do him justice, he was more than this — he was generous, actively, perseveringly generous, in his conduct to him. With open heart, open purse, public overture, and private negotiation with the parents of Peggy Sheridan, he at last succeeded in accomplishing Moriarty’s marriage.
Ormond’s biographer may well be allowed to make the most of his persevering generosity on this occasion, because no other scrap of good can be found, of which to make any thing in his favour, for several months to come. Whether Tom Jones was still too much, and Lady Annaly too little, in his head — whether it was that King Corny’s example and precepts were not always edifying — whether this young man had been prepared by previous errors of example and education — or whether he fell into mischief because he had nothing else to do in these Black Islands; certain it is, that from the operation of some or all of these causes conjointly, he deteriorated sadly. He took to “vagrant courses,” in which the muse forbears to follow him.
It is said that the Turks have a very convenient recording angel, who, without dropping a tear to blot out that which might be wished unsaid or undone, fairly shuts his eyes, and forbears to record whatever is said or done by man in three circumstances: when he is drunk, when he is in a passion, and while he is under age. What the under age, or what the years of discretion of a Turk may be, we do not at this moment recollect. We only know that our own hero is not yet twenty. Without being quite as accommodating as the Mahometan angel, we should wish to obliterate from our record some months of Ormond’s existence. He felt and was ashamed of his own degradation; but, after having lost, or worse than lost, a winter of his life, it was in vain to lament; or rather, it was not enough to weep over the loss — how to repair it was the question.
Whenever Ormond returned to his better self, whenever he thought of improving, he remembered Lady Annaly; and he now recollected with shame, that he had never had the grace to answer or to thank her for her letter. He had often thought of writing, but he had put it off from day to day, and now months had passed; he wrote a sad scrawling hand, and he had always been ashamed that Lady Annaly should see it; but now the larger shame got the better of the lesser, and he determined he would write. He looked for her letter, to read it over again before he answered it — the letter was very safe, for he considered it as his greatest treasure.
On recurring to the letter, he found that she had mentioned a present of books which she intended for him: a set of books which belonged to her son, Sir Herbert Annaly, and of which she found they had duplicates in their library. She had ordered the box containing them to be sent to Annaly, and had desired her agent there to forward it; but in case any delay should occur, she begged Mr. Ormond would take the trouble to inquire for them himself. This whole affair about the books had escaped Ormond’s memory: he felt himself blush all over when he read the letter again; and sent off a messenger immediately to the agent at Annaly, who had kept the box till it was inquired for. It was too heavy for the boy to carry, and he returned, saying that two men would not carry it, nor four — a slight exaggeration! A car was sent for it, and at last Harry obtained possession of the books. It was an excellent collection of what may be called the English and French classics: the French books were, at this time, quite useless to him, for he could not read French. Lady Annaly, however, sent these books on purpose to induce him to learn a language, which, if he should go into the army, as he seemed inclined to do, would be particularly useful to him. Lady Annaly observed that Mr. Ormond, wherever he might be in Ireland, would probably find even the priest of the parish a person who could assist him sufficiently in learning French; as most of the Irish parish priests were, at that time, educated at St. Omer’s or Louvain.
Father Jos had been at St. Omer’s, and Harry resolved to attack him with a French grammar and dictionary; but the French that Father Jos had learnt at St. Omer’s was merely from ear — he could not bear the sight of a French grammar. Harry was obliged to work on by himself. He again put off writing to thank Lady Annaly, till he could tell her that he had obeyed her commands; and that he could read at least a page of Gil Blas. Before this was accomplished, he learnt from the agent that Lady Annaly was in great affliction about her son, who had broken a blood-vessel. He could not think of intruding upon her at such a time — and, in short, he put it off till it seemed too late to write at all.
Among the English books was one in many volumes, which did not seize his attention forcibly, like Tom Jones, at once, but which won upon him by degrees, drew him on against his will, and against his taste. He hated moralizing and reflections; and there was here an abundance both of reflections and morality; these he skipped over, however, and went on. The hero and the heroine too were of a stiff fashion, which did not suit his taste; yet still there was something in the book that, in spite of the terrible array of good people, captivated his attention. The heroine’s perpetual egotism disgusted him — she was always too good and too full of herself — and she wrote dreadfully long letters. The hero’s dress and manner were too splendid, too formal, for every day use: at first he detested Sir Charles Grandison, who was so different from the friends he loved in real life, or the heroes he had admired in books; just as in old portraits, we are at first struck with the costume, but soon, if the picture be really by a master hand, our attention is fixed on the expression of the features and the life of the figure.
Sensible as Ormond was of the power of humour and ridicule, he was still more susceptible, as all noble natures are, of sympathy with elevated sentiments and with generous character. The character of Sir Charles Grandison, in spite of his ceremonious bowing on the hand, touched the nobler feelings of our young hero’s mind, inspired him with virtuous emulation, and made him ambitious to be a gentleman in the best and highest sense of the word: in short, it completely counteracted in his mind the effects of his late study. All the generous feelings which were so congenial to his own nature, and which he had seen combined in Tom Jones, as if necessarily, with the habits of an adventurer, a spendthrift, and a rake, he now saw united with high moral and religious principles, in the character of a man of virtue, as well as a man of honour; a man of cultivated Understanding, and accomplished manners. In Sir Charles Grandison’s history, he read that of a gentleman, who, fulfilling every duty of his station in society, eminently useful, respected and beloved, as brother, friend, master of a family, guardian, and head of a large estate, was admired by his own sex, and, what struck Ormond far more forcibly, was loved, passionately loved, by women — not by the low and profligate, but by the highest and most accomplished of the sex. Indeed, to him it appeared no fiction, while he was reading it; his imagination was so full of Clementina, and the whole Porretta family, that he saw them in his sleeping and waking dreams. The deep pathos so affected him, that he could scarcely recall his mind to the low concerns of life. Once, when King Corny called him to go out shooting — he found him with red eyes. Harry was ashamed to tell him the cause, lest he should laugh at him. But Corny was susceptible of the same kind of enthusiasm himself; and though he had, as he said, never been regularly what is called a reading man, yet the books he had read left ineffaceable traces in his memory. Fictions, if they touched him at all, struck him with all the force of reality; and he never spoke of the characters as in a book, but as if they had lived and acted. Harry was glad to find that here again, as in most things, they sympathized, and suited each other.
But Corny, if ready to give sympathy, was likewise imperious in requiring it; and Harry was often obliged to make sudden transitions from his own thoughts and employments, to those of his friend. These transitions, however difficult and provoking at the time, were useful discipline to his mind, giving him that versatility, in which persons of powerful imagination, accustomed to live in retirement, and to command their own time and occupations, are often most deficient. At this period, when our young hero was suddenly seized with a voracious appetite for books, it was trying to his patience to be frequently interrupted.
“Come, come — Harry Bookworm you are growing! — no good! — come out!” cried King Corny. “Lay down whatever you have in your hand, and come off this minute, till I show you a badger at bay, with half-a-dozen dogs.”
“Yes, sir — this minute — be kind enough to wait one minute.”
“It has been hiding and skulking this week from me — we have got it out of its snug hole at last. I bid them keep the dogs off till you came. Don’t be waiting any longer. Come off, Harry, come! Phoo! phoo! That book will keep cold, and what is it? Oh! the last volume of Sir Charles — not worth troubling your eyes with. The badger is worth a hundred of it — not a pin’s worth in that volume but worked stools and chairs, and China jugs and mugs. Oh! throw it from you. Come away.”
Another time, at the very death of Clarissa, King Corny would have Harry out to see a Solan goose.
“Oh! let Clarissa die another time; come now, you that never saw a Solan goose — it looks for all the world as if it wore spectacles; Moriarty says so.”
Harry was carried off to see the goose in spectacles, and was pressed into the service of King Corny for many hours afterwards, to assist in searching for its eggs. One of the Black Islands was a bare, high, pointed, desert rock, in which the sea-fowl built; and here, in the highest point of rock, this Solan goose had deposited some of her eggs, instead of leaving them in nests on the ground, as she usually does. The more dangerous it was to obtain the eggs, which the bird had hidden in this pinnacle of the rock, the more eager Corny was to have them; and he, and Ormond, and Moriarty, were at this perilous work for hours. King Corny directing and bawling, and Moriarty and Ormond with pole, net, and polehook, swinging and leaping from one ledge of rock to another, clambering, clinging, sliding, pushing, and pulling each other alternately, from hold to hold, with frightful precipices beneath them. As soon as Ormond had warmed to the business, he was delighted with the dangerous pursuit; but suddenly, just as he had laid his hand on the egg, and that King Corny shouted in triumph, Harry, leaping back across the cleft in the rock, missed his footing and fell, and must have been dashed to pieces, but for a sort of projecting landing-place, on which he was caught, where he lay for some minutes stunned. The terror of poor Corny was such that he could neither move nor look up, till Moriarty called out to him, that Master Harry was safe all to a sprained ankle. The fall, and the sprain, would not have been deemed worthy of a place in these memoirs of our hero but from their consequences — the consequences not on his body but on his mind. He could not for some weeks afterwards stir out, or take any bodily exercise; confined to the house, and forced to sit still, he was glad to read, during these long hours, to amuse himself. When he had read all the novels in the collection, which were very few, he went on to other books. Even those, which were not mere works of amusement, he found more entertaining than netting, fishing-nets, or playing backgammon with Father Jos, who was always cross when he did not win. Kind-hearted King Corny, considering always that Harry’s sprain was incurred in his service, would have sat with him all day long; but this Harry would not suffer, for he knew that it was the greatest punishment to Corny to stay within doors a whole day. When Corny in the evening returned from his various out-of-doors occupations and amusements, Harry was glad to talk to him of what he had been reading, and to hear his odd summary reflections.
“Well, Harry, my boy, now I’ve told you how it has been with me all day, let’s hear how you have been getting on with your bookmen:— has it been a good day with you to-day? — were you with Shakspeare — worth all the rest — all the world in him?”
Corny was no respecter of authorities in hooks; a great name went for nothing with him — it did not awe his understanding in the slightest degree.
If it were poetry, “did it touch the heart, or inflame the imagination?” If it were history, “was it true?” If it were philosophy, “was it sound reasoning?” These were the questions he asked. “No cramming any thing down his throat,” he said. This daring temper of mind, though it sometimes led him wrong, was advantageous to his young friend. It wakened Ormond’s powers, and prevented his taking upon trust the assertions, or the reputations, even of great writers.
The spring was now returning, and Dora was to return with spring. He looked forward to her return as to a new era in his existence: then he should live in better company, he should see something better than he had seen of late — be something better. His chief, his best occupations during this winter, had been riding, leaping, and breaking in horses: he had broken in a beautiful mare for Dora. Dora, when a child, was very fond of riding, and constantly rode out with her father. At the time when Harry Ormond’s head was full of Tom Jones, Dora had always been his idea of Sophy Western, though nothing else that he could recollect in her person, mind, or manner, bore any resemblance to Sophia: and now that Tom Jones had been driven out of his head by Sir Charles Grandison; now that his taste for women was a little raised by the pictures which Richardson had left in his imagination, Dora, with equal facility, turned into his new idea of a heroine — not his heroine, for she was engaged to White Connal — merely a heroine in the abstract. Ormond had been warned that he was to consider Dora as a married woman — well, so he would, of course. She was to be Mrs. Connal — so much the better:— he should be quite at ease with her, and she should teach him French, and drawing, and dancing, and improve his manners. He was conscious that his manners had, since his coming to the Black Islands, rusticated sadly, and lost the little polish they had acquired at Castle Hermitage, and during one famous winter in Dublin. His language and dialect, he was afraid, had become somewhat vulgar; but Dora, who had been refined by her residence with her aunt, and by her dancing-master, would polish him, and set all to rights, in the most agreeable manner possible. In the course of these his speculations on his rapid improvements, and his reflections on the perfectibility of man’s nature under the tuition of woman, some idea of its fallibility did cross his imagination or his memory; but then he blamed, most unjustly, his imagination for the suggestion. The danger would prove, as he would have it, to be imaginary. What danger could there be, when he knew, as he began and ended by saying to himself, that he was to consider Dora as a married woman — Mrs. Connal?
Dora’s aunt, an aunt by the mother’s side, a maiden aunt, who had never before been at the Black Islands, and whom Ormond had never seen, was to accompany Dora on her return to Corny Castle: our young hero had settled it in his head that this aunt must be something like Aunt Ellenor in Sir Charles Grandison; a stiff-backed, prim, precise, old-fashioned looking aunt. Never was man’s astonishment more visible in his countenance than was that of Harry Ormond on the first sight of Dora’s aunt. His surprise was so great as to preclude the sight of Dora herself.
There was nothing surprising in the lady, but there was, indeed, an extraordinary difference between our hero’s preconceived notion, and the real person whom he now beheld. Mademoiselle— as Miss O’Faley was called, in honour of her French parentage and education, and in commemoration of her having at different periods spent above half her life in France, looking for an estate that could never he found — Mademoiselle was dressed in all the peculiarities of the French dress of that day; she was of that indefinable age, which the French describe by the happy phrase of “une femme d’un certain age,” and which Miss O’Faley happily translated, “a woman of no particular age.” Yet though of no particular age in the eye of politeness, to the vulgar eye she looked like what people, who knew no better, might call an elderly woman; but she was as alert and lively as a girl of fifteen: a little wrinkled, but withal in fine preservation. She wore abundance of rouge, obviously — still more obviously took superabundance of snuff — and without any obvious motive, continued to play unremittingly a pair of large black French eyes, in a manner impracticable to a mere Englishwoman, and which almost tempted the spectator to beg she would let them rest. Mademoiselle, or Miss O’Faley, was in fact half French and half Irish — born in France, she was the daughter of an officer of the Irish brigade, and of a French lady of good family. In her gestures, tones, and language, there was a striking mixture or rapid succession of French and Irish. When she spoke French, which she spoke well, and with a true Parisian accent, her voice, gestures, air, and ideas, were all French; and she looked and moved a well-born, well-bred woman: the moment she attempted to speak English, which she spoke with an inveterate brogue, her ideas, manner, air, voice, and gestures were Irish; she looked and moved a vulgar Irishwoman.
“What do you see so wonderful in Aunt O’Faley?” said Dora.
“Nothing — only —”
The sentence was never finished, and the young lady was satisfied; for she perceived that the course of his thoughts was interrupted, and all idea of her aunt effaced, the moment he turned his eyes upon herself. Dora, no longer a child and his playfellow, but grown and formed, was, and looked as if she expected to be treated as, a woman. She was exceedingly pretty, not regularly handsome, but with most brilliant eyes — there was besides a childishness in her face, and in her slight figure, which disarmed all criticism on her beauty, and which contrasted strikingly, yet as our hero thought agreeably, with her womanish airs and manner. Nothing but her external appearance could be seen this first evening — she was tired and went to bed early.
Ormond longed to see more of her, on whom so much of his happiness was to depend.
This was the first time Mdlle. O’Faley had ever been at Corny Castle. Hospitality, as well as gratitude, determined the King of the Black Islands to pay her honour due.
“Now Harry Ormond,” said he, “I have made one capital good resolution. Here is my sister-in-law, Mdlle. O’Faley, coming to reside with me here, and has conquered her antipathy to solitude, and the Black Islands, and all from natural love and affection for my daughter Dora; for which I have a respect for her, notwithstanding all her eternal jabbering about politesse, and all her manifold absurdities, and infinite female vanities, of which she has a double proportion, being half French. But so was my wife, that I loved to distraction — for a wise man may do a foolish thing. Well, on all those accounts, I shall never contradict or gainsay this Mademoiselle — in all things, I shall make it my principle to give her her swing and her fling. But now observe me, Harry, I have no eye to her money — let her leave that to Dora or the cats, whichever pleases her — I am not looking to, nor squinting at, her succession. I am a great hunter, but not legacy-hunter — that is a kind of hunting I despise — and I wish every hunter of that kind may be thrown out, or thrown off, and may never be in at the death!”
Corny’s tirade against legacy-hunters was highly approved of by Ormond, but as to the rest, he knew nothing about Miss O’Faley’s fortune. He was now to learn that a rich relation of hers, a merchant in Dublin, whom living she had despised, because he was “neither noble, nor comme il faut,” dying had lately left her a considerable sum of money: so that after having been many years in straitened circumstances, she was now quite at her ease. She had a carriage, and horses, and servants; she could indulge her taste for dress, and make a figure in a country place.
The Black Islands were, to be sure, of all places, the most unpromising for her purpose, and the first sight of Corny Castle was enough to throw her into despair.
As soon as breakfast was over, she begged her brother-in-law would show her the whole of the chateau from the top to the bottom.
With all the pleasure in life, he said, he would attend her from the attics to the cellar, and show her all the additions, improvements, and contrivances, he had made, and all he intended to make, if Heaven should lend him life to complete every thing, or any thing — there was nothing finished.
“Nor ever will be,” said Dora, looking from her father to her aunt with a sort of ironical smile.
“Why, what has he been doing all this life?” said mademoiselle.
“Making a shift,” said Dora: “I will show you dozens of them as we go over this house. He calls them substitutes —I call them make-shifts.”
Ormond followed as they went over the house; and though he was sometimes amused by the smart remarks which Dora made behind backs as they went on, yet he thought she laughed too scornfully at her father’s oddities, and he was often in pain for his good friend Corny.
His majesty was both proud and ashamed of his palace: proud of the various instances it exhibited of his taste, originality, and daring; ashamed of the deficiencies and want of comfort and finish.
His ready wit had excuses, reasons, or remedies, for all Mademoiselle’s objections. Every alteration she proposed, he promised to get executed, and he promised impossibilities with the best faith imaginable.
“As the Frenchman answered to the Queen of France,” said Corny, “if it is possible, it shall be done; and if it is impossible, it must be done.”
Mademoiselle, who had expected to find her brother-in-law, as she owned, a little more difficult to manage, a little savage, and a little restive, was quite delighted with his politeness; but presuming on his complaisance, she went too far. In the course of a week, she made so many innovations, that Corny, seeing the labour and ingenuity of his life in danger of being at once destroyed, made a sudden stand.
“This is Corny Castle, Mademoiselle,” said he, “and you are making it Castle Topsy-Turvy, which must not be. Stop this work; for I’ll have no more architectural innovations done here — but by my own orders. Paper and paint, and furnish and finish, you may, if you will — I give you a carte-blanche; but I won’t have another wall touched, or chimney pulled down: so far shalt thou go, but no farther, Mdlle. O’Faley.” Mademoiselle was forced to submit, and to confine her brilliant imagination to papering, painting, and glazing.
Even in the course of these operations, King Corny became so impatient, that she was forced to get them finished surreptitiously, while he was out of the way in the mornings.
She made out who resided at every place within possible reach of morning or dinner visit: every house on the opposite banks of the lake was soon known to her, and she was current in every house. The boat was constantly rowing backwards and forwards over the lake; cars waiting or driving on the banks: in short, this summer all was gaiety at the Black Islands. Miss O’Faley was said to be a great acquisition in the neighbourhood: she was so gay, so sociable, so communicative; and she certainly, above all, knew so much of the world; she was continually receiving letters, and news, and patterns, from Dublin, and the Black Rock, and Paris. Each of which places, and all standing nearly upon the same level, made a great figure in her conversation, and in the imagination of the half or quarter gentry, with whom she consorted in this remote place. Every thing is great or small by comparison, and she was a great person in this little world. It had been the report of the country, that her niece was promised to the eldest son of Mr. Connal of Glynn; but the aunt seemed so averse to the match, and expressed this so openly, that some people began to think it would be broken off; others, who knew Cornelius O’Shane’s steadiness to his word of honour, were convinced that Miss O’Faley would never shake King Corny, and that Dora would assuredly be Mrs. Connal. All agreed that it was a foolish promise — that he might do better for his daughter. Miss O’Shane, with her father’s fortune and her aunt’s, would be a great prize; besides, she was thought quite a beauty, and remarkable elegant.
Dora was just the thing to be the belle and coquette of the Black Islands; the alternate scorn and familiarity with which she treated her admirers, and the interest and curiosity she excited, by sometimes taking delightful pains to attract, and then capriciously repelling, succeeded, as Miss O’Faley observed, admirably. Harry Ormond accompanied her and her aunt on all their parties of pleasure: Miss O’Faley would never venture in the boat or across the lake without him. He was absolutely essential to their parties: he was useful in the boat; he was useful to drive the car — Miss O’Faley would not trust any body else to drive her; he was an ornament to the ball — Miss O’Faley dubbed him her beau: she undertook to polish him, and to teach him to speak French — she was astonished by the quickness with which he acquired the language, and caught the true Parisian pronunciation. She often reiterated to her niece, and to others, who repeated it to Ormond, “that it was the greatest of pities he had but three hundred a year upon earth; but that, even with that pittance, she would prefer him for a nephew to another with his thousands. Mr. Ormond was well-born, and he had some politesse; and a winter at Paris would make him quite another person, quite a charming young man. He would have great success, she could answer for it, in certain circles and salons that she could name, only it might turn his head too much.” So far she said, and more she thought.
It was a million of pities that such a woman as herself, and such a girl as Dora, and such a young man as Mr. Ormond might be made, should be buried all their days in the Black Islands. Mdlle. O’Faley’s heart still turned to Paris: in Paris she was determined to live — there was no living, what you call living, any where else — elsewhere people only vegetate, as somebody said. Miss O’Faley, nevertheless, was excessively fond of her niece; and how to make the love for her niece and the love for Paris coincide, was the question. She long had formed a scheme of carrying her dear niece to Paris, and marrying her there to some M. le Baron or M. le Marquis; but Dora’s father would not hear of her living any where but in Ireland, or marrying any one but an Irishman. Miss O’Faley had lived long enough in Ireland to know that the usual method, in all disputes, is to split the difference: therefore she decided that her niece should marry some Irishman who would take her to Paris, and reside with her there, at least a great part of his time — the latter part of the bargain to be kept a secret from the father till the marriage should be accomplished. Harry Ormond appeared to be the very man for this purpose: he seemed to hang loosely upon the world — no family connexions seemed to have any rights over him; he had no profession — but a very small fortune. Miss O’Faley’s fortune might be very convenient, and Dora’s person very agreeable to him; and it was scarcely to be doubted that he would easily be persuaded to quit the Black Islands, and the British Islands, for Dora’s sake. The petit menage was already quite arranged in Mdlle. O’Faley’s head — even the wedding-dresses had floated in her fancy. “As to the promise given to White Connal,” as she said to herself, “it would be a mercy to save her niece from such a man; for she had seen him lately, when he had called upon her in Dublin, and he was a vulgar person: his hair looked as if it had not been cut these hundred years, and he wore — any thing but what he should wear; therefore it would be a favour to her brother-in-law, for whom she had in reality a serious regard — it would be doing him the greatest imaginable benefit, to save him from the shame of either keeping or breaking his ridiculous and savage promise.” Her plan was therefore to prevent the possibility of his keeping it, by marrying her niece privately to Ormond before White Connal should return in October. When the thing was done, and could not be undone, Cornelius O’Shane, she was persuaded, would be very glad of it, for Harry Ormond was his particular favourite: he had called him his son — son-in-law was almost the same thing. Thus arguing with happy female casuistry, Mademoiselle went on with the prosecution of her plan. To the French spirit of intrigue and gallantry she joined Irish acuteness, and Irish varieties of odd resource, with the art of laying suspicion asleep by the appearance of an imprudent, blundering good nature; add to all this a degree of confidence, that could not have been acquired by any means but one. Thus accomplished, “rarely did she manage matters.” By the very boldness and openness of her railing against the intended bridegroom, she convinced her brother-in-law that she meant nothing more than talk. Besides, through all her changing varieties of objections, there was one point on which she never varied — she never objected to going to Dublin, in September, to buy the wedding-clothes for Dora. This seemed to Cornelius O’Shane perfect proof, that she had no serious intention to break off or defer the match. As to the rest, he was glad to see his own Harry such a favourite: he deserved to be a favourite with every body, Cornelius thought. The young people were continually together. “So much the better,” he would say: “all was above-board, and there could be no harm going forward, and no danger in life.” All was above-board on Harry Ormond’s part; he knew nothing of Miss O’Faley’s designs, nor did he as yet feel that there was for him much danger. He was not thinking as a lover of Dora in particular, but he felt a new and extraordinary desire to please in general. On every fair occasion, he liked to show how well he could ride; how well he could dance; how gallant and agreeable he could be: his whole attention was now turned to the cultivation of his personal accomplishments. He succeeded: he danced, he rode to admiration — his glories of horsemanship, and sportsmanship, the birds that he shot, and the fish that he caught, and the leaps that he took, are to this hour recorded in the tradition of the inhabitants of the Black Islands. At that time, his feats of personal activity and address made him the theme of every tongue, the delight of every eye, the admiration of every woman, and the envy of every man: not only with the damsels of Peggy Sheridan’s class was he the favourite, but with all the young ladies, the belles of the half gentry, who filled the ball-rooms; and who made the most distinguished figure in the riding, boating, walking, tea-drinking parties. To all, or any of these belles, he devoted his attention rather than to Dora, for he was upon honour; and very honourable he was, and very prudent, moreover, he thought himself. He was, at present, quite content with general admiration: there was, or there seemed, at this time, more danger for his head than his heart — more danger that his head should be turned with the foolish attentions paid him by many silly girls, than that he should be a dupe to a passion for any one of them: there was imminent danger of his becoming a mere dancing, driving, country coxcomb.
One day when Harry Ormond was out shooting with Moriarty Carroll, Moriarty abruptly began with, “Why then, ’tis what I am thinking, Master Harry, that King Corny don’t know as much of that White Connal as I do.” “What do you know of Mr. Connal?” said Harry, loading his piece. “I didn’t know you had ever seen him.” “Oh! but I did, and no great sight to see. Unlike the father, old Connal, of Glynn, who is the gentleman to the last, every inch, even with the coat dropping off his back; and the son, with the best coat in Christendom, has not the look of a gentleman at-all — at-all — nor hasn’t it in him, inside no more than outside.” “You may be mistaken there, as you have never been withinside of him, Moriarty,” said Ormond. “Oh! faith, and if I have not been withinside of him, I have heard enough from them that seen him turned inside out, hot and cold. Sure I went down there last summer, to his country, to see a shister of my own that’s married in it; and lives just by Connal’s Town, as the man calls that sheep farm of his.” “Well, let the gentleman call his own place what he will —” “Oh! he may call it what he plases for me — I know what the country calls him; and lest your honour should not ax me, I’ll tell you: they call him White Connal the negre! — Think of him that would stand browbating the butcher an hour, to bate down the farthing a pound in the price of the worst bits of the mate, which he’d bespake always for the servants; or stand, he would — I’ve seen him with my own eyes — higgling with the poor child with the apron round the neck, that was sent to sell him the eggs —” “Hush! Moriarty,” said Ormond, who did not wish to hear any farther particulars of Mr. Connal’s domestic economy: and he silenced Moriarty, by pointing to a bird. But the bird flew away, and Moriarty returned to his point. “I wouldn’t be telling the like of any jantleman, but to show the nature of him. The minute after he had screwed the halfpenny out of the child, he’d throw down, may be, fifty guineas in gould, for the horse he’d fancy for his own riding: not that he rides better than the sack going to the mill, nor so well; but that he might have it to show, and say he was better mounted than any man at the fair: and the same he’d throw away more guineas than I could tell, at the head of a short-horned bull, or a long-horned bull, or some kind of a bull from England, may be, just becaase he’d think nobody else had one of the breed in all Ireland but himself.” “A very good thing, at least, for the country, to improve the breed of cattle.” “The country! —’Tis little the man thinks of the country that never thought of any thing but himself, since his mother sucked him.” “Suckled him, you mean,” said Harry. “No matter — I’m no spaker — but I know that man’s character nevertheless: he is rich; but a very bad character the poor gives him up and down.” “Perhaps, because he is rich.” “Not at all; the poor loves the rich that helps with the kind heart. Don’t we all love King Corny to the blacking of his shoes? — Oh! there’s the difference! — who could like the man that’s always talking of the craturs, and yet, to save the life of the poorest cratur that’s forced to live under him, wouldn’t forbear to drive, and pound, and process, for the little con acre, the potatoe ridge, the cow’s grass, or the trifle for the woman’s peck of flax, was she dying, and sell the woman’s last blanket? — White Connal is a hard man, and takes all to the uttermost farthing the law allows.” “Well, even so, I suppose the law does not allow him more than his due,” said Ormond. “Oh! begging your pardon, Master Harry,” said Moriarty, “that’s becaase you are not a lawyer.” “And are you?” said Harry.
“Only as we all are through the country. And now I’ll only just tell you, Master Harry, how this White Connal sarved my shister’s husband, who was an under-tenant to him:— see, the case was this —” “Oh! don’t tell me a long case, for pity’s sake. I am no lawyer — I shall not understand a word of it.” “But then, sir, through the whole consarning White Connal, what I’m thinking of, Master Harry,” said Moriarty, “is, I’m grieving that a daughter of our dear King Corny, and such a pretty likely girl as Miss Dora —” “Say no more, Moriarty, for there’s a partridge.” “Oh! is it so with you?” thought Moriarty —“that’s just what I wanted to know — and I’ll keep your secret: I don’t forget Peggy Sheridan — and his goodness.”
Moriarty said not a word more about White Connal, or Miss Dora; and he and Harry shot a great many birds this day.
It is astonishing how quickly, and how justly, the lower class of people in Ireland discover and appreciate the characters of their superiors, especially of the class just above them in rank.
Ormond hoped that Moriarty had been prejudiced in his account of White Connal, and that private feelings had induced him to exaggerate. Harry was persuaded of this, because Cornelius O’Shane had spoken to him of Connal, and had never represented him to be a hard man. In fact, O’Shane did not know him. White Connal had a property in a distant county, where he resided, and only came from time to time to see his father. O’Shane had then wondered to see the son grown so unlike the father; and he attributed the difference to White Connal’s having turned grazier. The having derogated from the dignity of an idle gentleman, and having turned grazier was his chief fault in King Corny’s eyes: so that the only point in Connal’s character and conduct, for which he deserved esteem, was that for which his intended father-in-law despised him. Connal had early been taught by his father’s example, who was an idle, decayed, good gentleman, of the old Irish stock, that genealogies and old maps of estates in other people’s possessions, do not gain quite so much respect in this world as solid wealth. The son was determined, therefore, to get money; but in his horror of his father’s indolence and poverty, he ran into a contrary extreme — he became not only industrious, but rapacious.
In going lately to Dublin to settle with a sales master, he had called on Dora at her aunt’s in Dublin, and he had been “greatly struck,” as he said, “with Miss O’Shane; she was as fine a girl as any in Ireland — turn out who they could against her; all her points good. But, better than beauty, she would be no contemptible fortune: with her aunt’s assistance, she would cut up well; she was certain of all her father’s Black Islands — fine improvable land, if well managed.”
These considerations had their full effect. Connal, knowing that the young lady was his destined bride, had begun by taking the matter coolly, and resolving to wait for the properest time to wed; yet the sight of Dora’s charms had so wrought upon him, that he was now impatient to conclude the marriage immediately. Directly after seeing Dora in Dublin, he had gone home and “put things in order and in train to bear his absence,” while he should pay a visit to the Black Islands. Business, which must always be considered before pleasure, had detained him at home longer than he had foreseen: but now certain rumours he heard of gay doings in the Black Islands, and a letter from his father, advising him not to delay longer paying his respects at Corny Castle, determined him to set out. He wrote to Mr. O’Shane to announce his intention, and begged to have the answer directed to his father’s at Glynn.
One morning as Miss O’Faley, Mr. O’Shane, and Ormond, were at breakfast, Dora, who was usually late, not having yet appeared, Miss O’Faley saw a little boy running across the fields towards the house. “That boy runs as if he was bringing news,” said she.
“So he has a right to do,” said Corny: “if I don’t mistake that’s the post; that is, it is not the post, but a little special of my own — a messenger I sent off to catch post.”
“To do what?” said Mademoiselle.
“Why, to catch post,” said Corny. “I bid him gallop off for the life and put across (lake understood) to the next post town, which is Ballynaslugger, and to put in the letters that were too late here at that office there; and to bring back whatever he found, with no delay — but gallop off for the bare life.”
This was an operation which the boy performed, whenever requisite, at the imminent hazard of his neck every time, to say nothing of his chance of drowning.
“Well, Catch-post, my little rascal,” said King Corny, “what have you for us the day?”
“I got nothing at all, only a wetting for myself, plase your honour, and one bit of a note for your honour, which I have here for you as dry as the bone in my breast.”
He produced the bit of a note, which, King Corny’s hands being at that time too full of the eggs and the kettle to receive graciously, was laid down on the corner of the table, from which it fell, and Miss O’Faley picking it up, and holding it by one corner, exclaimed, “Is this what you call dry as a bone, in this country? And mighty clean, too — faugh! When will this entire nation leave off chewing tobacco, I wonder! This is what you style clean, too, in this country?”
“Why, then,” said the boy, looking close at the letter, “I thought it was clane enough when I got it — and give it — but ’tis not so clane now, sure enough; this corner — whatever come over it — would it be the snuff, my lady?”
The mark of Miss O’Faley’s thumb was so visible, and the snuff so palpable, and the effort to brush it from the wet paper so disastrous, that Miss O’Faley let the matter rest where it was. King Corny put silver into the boy’s hand, bidding him not be too much of a rogue; the boy, smiling furtively, twitched the hair on his forehead, bobbed his head in sign of thanks, and drawing, not shutting, the door after him, disappeared.
“As sure as I’m Cornelius O’Shane, this is White Connal in propria persona,” said he, opening the note.
“Mon Dieu! Bon Dieu! Ah, Dieu!” cried Mdlle. O’Faley.
“Hush! Whisht!” cried the father —“here’s Dora coming.” Dora came in. “Any letter for me?” “Ay, darling, one for you.”
“Oh, give it me! I’m always in a desperate hurry for my letters: where is it?”
“No — you need not hold out your pretty hand; the letter is for you, but not to you,” said King Corny; “and now you know — ay, now you guess — my quick little blusher, who ’tis from.”
“I guess? not I, indeed — not worth my guessing,” cried Dora, throwing herself sideways into a chair. “My tea, if you please, aunt.” Then, taking the cup, without adverting to Harry, who handed it to her, she began stirring the tea, as if it and all things shared her scorn.
“Ma chère! mon chat!” said Mdlle. O’Faley, “you are quite right to spare yourself the trouble of guessing; for I give it you in two, I give it you in four, I give it you in eight, and you would never guess right. Figure to yourself only, that a man, who has the audacity to call himself a lover of Miss O’Shane’s, could fold, could seal, could direct a letter in such a manner as this, which you here behold.”
Dora, who during this speech had sat fishing for sugar in her tea-cup, raised her long eyelashes, and shot a scornful glance at the letter; but intercepting a crossing look of Ormond’s, the expression of her countenance suddenly changed, and with perfect composure she observed, “A man may fold a letter badly, and be nevertheless a very good man.”
“That nobody can possibly contradict,” said her father; “and on all occasions ’tis a comfort to be able to say what no one can contradict.”
“No well-bred person will never contradict nothing,” said Miss O’Faley. “But, without contradicting you, my child.” resumed Miss O’Faley, “I maintain the impossibility of his being a gentleman who folds a letter so.”
“But if folding a letter is all a man wants of being a gentleman,” said Dora, “it might be learnt, I should think; it might be taught —”
“If you were the teacher, Dora, it might, surely,” said her father.
“But Heaven, I trust, will arrange that better,” said mademoiselle.
“Whatever Heaven arranges must be best,” said Dora.
“Heaven and your father, if you please, Dora,” said her father: “put that and that together, like a dutiful daughter, as you must be.”
“Must!” said Dora, angrily.
“That offensive must slipped out by mistake, darling; I meant only being you, you must be all that’s dutiful and good.”
“Oh!” said Dora, “that’s another view of the subject.”
“You have a very imperfect view of the subject, yet,” said her father; “for you have both been so taken up with the manner, that you have never thought of inquiring into the matter of this letter.”
“And what is the matter?” said Miss O’Faley.
“Form!” continued the father, addressing himself to his daughter; “form, I acknowledge, is one thing, and a great thing in a daughter’s eyes.”
Dora blushed. “But in a father’s eyes substance is apt to be more.”
Dora raised her cup and saucer together to her lips at this instant, so that the substance of the saucer completely hid her face from her father.
“But,” said Miss O’Faley, “you have not told us yet what the man says.”
“He says he will be here whenever we please.”
“That’s never,” said Miss O’Faley: “never, I’d give for answer, if my pleasure is to be consulted.”
“Luckily, there’s another person’s pleasure to be consulted here,” said the father, keeping his eyes fixed upon his daughter.
“Another cup of tea, aunt, if you please.”
“Then the sooner the better, I say,” continued her father; “for when a disagreeable thing is to be done — that is, when a thing that’s not quite agreeable to a young lady, such as marriage —” Dora took the cup of tea from her aunt’s hand, Harry not interfering —“I say,” persisted her father, “the sooner it’s done and over, the better.”
Dora saw that Ormond’s eyes were fixed upon her: she suddenly tasted, and suddenly started back from her scalding tea; Harry involuntarily uttered some exclamation of pity; she turned, and seeing his eyes still fixed upon her, said, “Very rude, sir, to stare at any one so.”
“I only thought you had scalded yourself.”
“Then you only thought wrong.”
“At any rate, there’s no great occasion to be angry with me, Dora.”
“And who is angry, pray, Mr. Ormond? What put it in your head that I was doing you the honour to be angry with you?”
“The cream! the cream!” cried Miss O’Faley.
A sudden motion, we must not say an angry motion of Dora’s elbow, had at this moment overset the cream ewer; but Harry set it up again, before its contents poured on her new riding-habit.
“Thank you,” said she, “thank you; but,” added she, changing the places of the cream ewer and cups and saucers before her, “I’d rather manage my own affairs my own way, if you’d let me, Mr. Ormond — if you’d leave me — I can take care of myself my own way.”
“I beg your pardon for saving your habit from destruction, for that is the only cause of offence that I am conscious of having given. But I leave you to your own way, as I am ordered,” said he, rising from the breakfast table.
“Sparring! sparring again, you two!” said Dora’s father: “but, Dora, I wonder whether you and White Connal were sparring that way when you met.”
“Time enough for that, sir, after marriage,” said Dora.
Our hero, who had stood leaning on the back of his chair, fearing that he had been too abrupt in what he had said, cast a lingering look at Dora, as her father spoke about White Connal, and as she replied; but there was something so unfeminine, so unamiable, so decided and bold, he thought, in the tone of her voice, as she pronounced the word marriage, that he then, without reluctance, and with a feeling of disgust, quitted the room, and left her “to manage her own affairs, and to take her own way.”