When Harcourt repaired to Glencore's bedroom, where he still lay,
wearied and feverish after a bad night, he was struck by the signs of
suffering in the sick man's face. The cheeks were bloodless and fallen
iq, the lips pinched, and in the eyes there shone that unnatural
brilliancy which results from an over-wrought and over-excited brain.
“Sit down here, George,” said he, pointing to a chair beside the bed; “I
want to talk to you. I thought every day that I could muster courage for
what I wish to say; but somehow, when the time arrived, I felt like a
criminal who entreats for a few hours more of life, even though it be a
life of misery.”
“It strikes me that you were never less equal to the effort than now,”
said Harcourt, laying his hand on the other's pulse.
“Don't believe my pulse, George,” said Glencore, smiling faintly. “The
machine may work badly, but it has wonderful holding out. I 've gone
through enough,” added he, gloomily, “to kill most men, and here I am
still, breathing and suffering.”
“This place doesn't suit you, Glencore. There are not above two days in
the month you can venture to take the air.”
“And where would you have me go, sir?” he broke in, fiercely. “Would you
advise Paris and the Boulevards, or a palace in the Piazza di Spagna at
Rome; or perhaps the Chiaja at Naples would be public enough? Is it that
I may parade disgrace and infamy through Europe that I should leave this
solitude?”
“I want to see you in a better climate, Glencore,--in a place where the
sun shines occasionally.”
“This suits me,” said the other, bluntly; “and here I have the security
that none can invade,--none molest me. But it is not of myself I wish to
speak,--it is of my boy.”
Harcourt made no reply, but sat patiently to listen to what was coming.
“It is time to think of him,” added Glencore, slowly. “The other
day,--it seems but the other day,--and he was a mere child; a few years
more,--to seem when past like a long dreary night,--and he will be a
man.”
“Very true,” said Harcourt; “and Charley is one of those fellows who
only make one plunge from the boy into all the responsibilities of
manhood. Throw him into a college at Oxford, or the mess of a regiment
to-morrow, and this day week you'll not know him from the rest.”
Glencore was silent; if he had heard, he never noticed Harcourt's
remark.
“Has he ever spoken to you about himself, Harcourt?” asked he, after a
pause.
“Never, except when I led the subject in that direction; and even then
reluctantly, as though it were a topic he would avoid.”
“Have you discovered any strong inclination in him for a particular kind
of life, or any career in preference to another?”
“None; and if I were only to credit what I see of him, I 'd say that
this dull monotony and this dreary uneventful existence is what he likes
best of all the world.”
“You really think so?” cried Glencore, with an eagerness that seemed out
of proportion to the remark.
“So far as I see,” rejoined Harcourt, guardedly, and not wishing to let
his observation carry graver consequences than he might suspect.
“So that you deem him capable of passing a life of a quiet, unambitious
tenor,--neither seeking for distinctions nor fretting after honors?”
“How should he know of their existence, Glencore? What has the boy ever
heard of life and its struggles? It's not in Homer or Sallust he 'd
learn the strife of parties and public men.”
“And why need he ever know them?” broke in Glencore, fiercely.
“If he doesn't know them now, he's sure to be taught them hereafter. A
young fellow who will succeed to a title and a good fortune--”
“Stop, Harcourt!” cried Glencore, passionately. “Has anything of this
kind ever escaped you in intercourse with the boy?”
“Not a word--not a syllable.”
“Has he himself ever, by a hint, or by a chance word, implied that he
was aware of--”
Glencore faltered and hesitated, for the word he sought for did not
present itself. Harcourt, however, released him from all embarrassment
by saying,--
“With me the boy is rarely anything but a listener; he hears me talk
away of tiger-shooting and buffalo-hunting, scarcely ever interrupting
me with a question. But I can see in his manner with the country people,
when they salute him, and call him 'my lord'--”
“But he is not 'my lord,'” broke in Glencore.
“Of course he is not; that I am well aware of.”
“He never will--never shall be,” cried Glencore, in a voice to which a
long pent-up passion imparted a terrible energy.
“How!--what do you mean, Glencore?” said Harcourt, eagerly. “Has he any
malady; is there any deadly taint?”
“That there is, by Heaven!” cried the sick man, grasping the curtain
with one hand, while he held the other firmly clenched upon his
forehead,--“a taint, the deadliest that can stain a human heart! Talk
of station, rank, title--what are they, if they are to be coupled with
shame, ignominy, and sorrow? The loud voice of the herald calls his
father Sixth Viscount of Glencore, but a still louder voice proclaims
his mother a--”
With a wild burst of hysteric laughter, he threw himself, face
downwards, on the bed; and now scream after scream burst from him,
till the room was filled by the servants, in the midst of whom appeared
Billy, who had only that same day returned from Leenane, whither he had
gone to make a formal resignation of his functions as letter-carrier.
“This is nothing but an _accessio nervosa,_” said Billy; “clear the
room, ladies and gentlemen, and lave me with the patient.” And Harcourt
gave the signal for obedience by first taking his departure.
Lord Glencore's attack was more serious than at first it was
apprehended, and for three days there was every threat of a relapse of
his late fever; but Billy's skill was once more successful, and on the
fourth day he declared that the danger was past. During this period,
Harcourt's attention was for the first time drawn to the strange
creature who officiated as the doctor, and who, in despite of all the
detracting influences of his humble garb and mean attire, aspired to be
treated with the deference due to a great physician.
“If it's the crown and the sceptre makes the king,” said he, “'tis the
same with the science that makes the doctor; and no man can be despised
when he has a rag of ould Galen's mantle to cover his shoulders.”
“So you're going to take blood from him?” asked Harcourt, as he met him
on the stairs, where he had awaited his coming one night when it was
late.
“No, sir; 'tis more a disturbance of the great nervous centres than any
derangement of the heart and arteries,” said Billy, pompously; “that's
what shows a real doctor,--to distinguish between the effects of
excitement and inflammation, which is as different as fireworks is from
a bombardment.”
“Not a bad simile, Master Billy; come in and drink a glass of
brandy-and-water with me,” said Harcourt, right glad at the prospect of
such companionship.
Billy Traynor, too, was flattered by the invitation, and seated himself
at the fire with an air at once proud and submissive.
“You've a difficult patient to treat there,” said Harcourt, when he had
furnished his companion with a pipe, and twice filled his glass; “he's
hard to manage, I take it?”
“Yer' right,” said Billy; “every touch is a blow, every breath of air is
a hurricane with him. There 's no such thing as traitin' a man of that
timperament; it's the same with many of them ould families as with our
racehorses,--they breed them too fine.”
“Egad! I think you are right,” said Harcourt, pleased with an
illustration that suited his own modes of thinking.
“Yes, sir,” said Billy, gaining confidence by the approval; “a man is a
ma-chine, and all the parts ought to be balanced, and, as the ancients
say, _in equilibrio_. If preponderance here or there, whether it
be brain or spinal marrow, cardiac functions or digestive ones, you
disthroy him, and make that dangerous kind of constitution that, like a
horse with a hard mouth, or a boat with a weather helm, always runs to
one side.”
“That's well put, well explained,” said Harcourt, who really thought the
illustration appropriate.
“Now, my lord there,” continued Billy, “is all out of balance, every bit
of him. Bleed him, and he sinks; stimulate him, and he goes ragin' mad.
'T is their physical conformation makes their character; and to know how
to cure them in sickness, one ought to have some knowledge of them in
health.”
“How came you to know all this? You are a very remarkable fellow,
Billy.”
“I am, sir; I'm a phenumenon in a small way. And many people thinks,
when they see and convarse with me, what a pity it is I hav' n't the
advantages of edication and instruction; and that's just where they 're
wrong,--complately wrong.”
“Well, I confess I don't perceive that.”
“I'll show you, then. There's a kind of janius natural to men like
myself,--in Ireland I mean, for I never heerd of it elsewhere,--that's
just like our Irish emerald or Irish diamond,--wonderful if one
considers where you find it, astonishin' if you only think how azy it is
to get, but a regular disappointment, a downright take-in, if you intend
to have it cut and polished and set. No, sir; with all the care and
culture in life, you 'll never make a precious stone of it!”
“You've not taken the right way to convince me, by using such an
illustration, Billy.”
“I 'll try another, then,” said Billy. “We are like Willy-the-Whisps,
showing plenty of light where there's no road to travel, but of no
manner of use on the highway, or in the dark streets of a village where
one has business.”
“Your own services here are the refutation to your argument, Billy,”
said Harcourt, filling his glass.
“'Tis your kindness to say so, sir,” said Billy, with gratified pride;
“but the sacrat was, he thrusted me,--that was the whole of it. All the
miracles of physic is confidence, just as all the magic of eloquence is
conviction.”
“You have reflected profoundly, I see,” said Harcourt.
“I made a great many observations at one time of my life,--the
opportunity was favorable.”
“When and how was that?”
“I travelled with a baste caravan for two years, sir; and there's
nothing taches one to know mankind like the study of bastes!”
“Not complimentary to humanity, certainly,” said Harcourt, laughing.
“Yes, but it is, though; for it is by a consideration of the _fero
naturo_ that you get at the raal nature of mere animal existence. You
see there man in the rough, as a body might say, just as he was turned
out of the first workshop, and before he was infiltrated with the
_divinus afflatus_, the ethereal essence, that makes him the first
of creation. There 's all the qualities, good and bad,--love, hate,
vengeance, gratitude, grief, joy, ay, and mirth,--there they are in the
brutes; but they 're in no subjection, except by fear. Now, it's out
of man's motives his character is moulded, and fear is only one amongst
them. D' ye apprehend me?”
“Perfectly; fill your pipe.” And he pushed the tobacco towards him.
“I will; and I 'll drink the memory of the great and good man that first
intro-duced the weed amongst us--Here's Sir Walter Raleigh! By the same
token, I was in his house last week.”
“In his house! where?”
“Down at Greyhall. You Englishmen, savin' your presence, always forget
that many of your celebrities lived years in Ireland; for it was the
same long ago as now,--a place of decent banishment for men of janius,
a kind of straw-yard where ye turned out your intellectual hunters till
the sayson came on at home.”
“I 'm sorry to see, Billy, that, with all your enlightenment, you have
the vulgar prejudice against the Saxon.”
“And that's the rayson I have it, because it is vulgar,” said Billy,
eagerly. “Vulgar means popular, common to many; and what's the best test
of truth in anything but universal belief, or whatever comes nearest to
it? I wish I was in Parliament--I just wish I was there the first night
one of the nobs calls out 'That 's vulgar;' and I 'd just say to him,
'Is there anything as vulgar as men and women? Show me one good thing in
life that is n't vulgar! Show me an object a painter copies, or a poet
describes, that is n't so!' Ayeh,” cried he, impatiently, “when they
wanted a hard word to fling at us, why didn't they take the right one?”
“But you are unjust, Billy; the ungenerous tone you speak of is fast
disappearing. Gentlemen nowadays use no disparaging epithets to men
poorer or less happily circumstanced than themselves.”
“Faix,” said Billy, “it isn't sitting here at the same table with
yourself that I ought to gainsay that remark.”
And Harcourt was so struck by the air of good breeding in which he
spoke, that he grasped his hand, and shook it warmly.
“And what is more,” continued Billy, “from this day out I 'll never think
so.”
He drank off his glass as he spoke, giving to the libation all the
ceremony of a solemn vow.
“D' ye hear that?--them's oars; there's a boat coming in.”
“You have sharp hearing, master,” said Harcourt, laughing.
“I got the gift when I was a smuggler,” replied he. “I could put my ear
to the ground of a still night, and tell you the tramp of a revenue boot
as well as if I seen it. And now I'll lay sixpence it's Pat Morissy is
at the bow oar there; he rows with a short jerking stroke there 's
no timing. That's himself, and it must be something urgent from the
post-office that brings him over the lough to-night.”
The words were scarcely spoken when Craggs entered with a letter in his
hand.
“This is for you, Colonel,” said he; “it was marked 'immediate,' and the
post-mistress despatched it by an express.”
The letter was a very brief one; but, in honor to the writer, we shall
give it a chapter to itself.