By the details of my last two chapters, I have been obliged to recede,
as it were, from the due course of my story, and speak of events
which occurred prior to those mentioned in a former chapter; but this
irregularity was a matter of necessity, since I could not pursue the
narrative of my father's life without introducing to the reader certain
characters who, more or less, exerted an influence on his fortunes.
Let me now, however, turn to my tale, from which it is my intention in
future to digress as seldom as possible. A few lines, written in haste,
had summoned MacNaghten to Castle Carew, on the morning of that Friday
for which my father had invited his friends to dinner. With all
his waywardness, and all the weaknesses of an impulsive nature, Dan
MacNaghten stood higher in my father's esteem than any other of his
friends. It was not alone that he had given my father the most signal
proofs of his friendship, but that, throughout his whole career, marked
as it was by folly and rashness, and the most thoughtless extravagance,
he had never done a single action that reflected on his reputation as a
man of honor, nor, in all the triumphs of his prosperous days, or in the
trials of his adverse ones, had be forfeited the regard of any who knew
him. My father had intrusted to him, during his absence, everything that
could be done without correspondence; for amongst Dan's characteristics.
none was more remarkable than his horror of letter-writing; and it was
a popular saying of the time “that Dan MacNaghten would rather fight two
duels than write one challenge.” Of course, it may be imagined how much
there was for two such friends to talk over when they met, for if my
father's letters were few and brief, MacNaghten's were still fewer and
less explicit, leaving voids on either side that nothing but a meeting
could supply.
Early, therefore, that Friday morning, Dan's gig and mottled gray, the
last remnant of an extensive stable establishment, rattled up the avenue
of Castle Carew, and MacNaghten strolled into the garden to loiter about
till such time as my father might be stirring. He was not many minutes
there, however, when my father joined him, and the two friends embraced
cordially, and arm-in-arm returned to the house.
It was not without astonishment Dan saw that the breakfast-table was
spread in the same little garden-room which my father always used in his
bachelor days, and, still more, that only two places were laid.
“You are wondering, where's my wife, Dan. She never breakfasts with me;
nor indeed, do we see each other till late in the afternoon,--a custom,
I will own, that I used to rebel against at first, but I 'm getting more
accustomed to it now. And, after all, Dan, it would be a great sacrifice
of all her comfort should I insist on a change; so I put up with it as
best I can.”
“Perhaps she 'll see herself, in time, that these are not the habits
here.”
“Perhaps so,” said my father; “but usually French people think their
own ways the rule, and all others the exception. I suppose you were
surprised at my marriage, Dan.”
“Faith, I was, I own to you. I thought you one of those inveterate
Irishers that could n't think of anything but Celtic blood. You
remember, when we were boys, how we used to rave on that theme.”
“Very true. Like all the grafts, we deemed ourselves purer than the
ancient stock; but no man ever knows when, where, or whom he'll marry.
It's all nonsense planning and speculating about it. You might as well
look out for a soft spot to fall in a steeplechase. You come smash down
in the very middle of your speculations. I 'm sure, as for me, I never
dreamed of a wife till I found that I had one.”
“I know so well how it all happened,” cried Dan, laughing. “You got
up one of those delightful intimacies--that pleasant, familiar kind of
half-at-homishness that throws a man always off his guard, and leaves
him open to every assault of female fascination, just when he fancies
that he is the delight of the whole circle. Egad, I've had at least
half-a-dozen such, and must have been married at least as many times, if
somebody hadn't discovered, in the mean while, that I was ruined.”
“So that you never fell in love in your prosperous days, Dan?”
“Who does--who ever did? The minor that wrote sonnets has only to come
of age, and feel that he can indite a check, to be cured of his love
fever. Love is a passion most intimately connected with laziness and
little money. Give a fellow seven or eight thousand a-year, good
health and good spirits, and I 'll back him to do every other folly in
Christendom before he thinks of marriage.”
“From all of which I am to conclude that you set down this act of
mine either as a proof of a weak mind or a failing exchequer,” said my
father.
“Not in your case,” said he, more slowly, and with a greater air of
reflection. “You had always a dash of ambition about you; and the
chances are that you set your affections on one that you half despaired
of obtaining, or had really no pretentions to look for. I see I 'm
right, Walter,” said he, as my father fidgeted, and looked confused. “I
could have wagered a thousand on it, if I had as much. You entered for
the royal plate, and, by Jove! I believe you were right.”
“You have not made so bad a guess of it, Dan; but what say the rest?
What's the town gossip?”
“Do you not know Dublin as well or better than I do? Can't you frame to
a very letter every syllable that has been uttered on the subject? or
need I describe to you my Lady Kilfoyle's fan-shaking horror as she
tells of 'that poor dear Carew, and his unfortunate marriage with Heaven
knows whom!' Nor Bob French's astonishment that you, of all men, should
marry out of your sphere,--or, as he calls it, your 'spire.' Nor
how graphically Mrs. Stapleton Harris narrates the manner of your
entanglement: how you fought two brothers, and only gave in to the
superior force of an outraged mamma and the tears of your victim! Nor
fifty other similar stories, in which you figured alternately as the
dupe or the deceived,--the only point of agreement being a universal
reprobation of one who, with all his pretentions to patriotism, should
have entirely forgotten the claims of Irish manufacture.”
“And are they all so severe,--so unjust?”
“Very nearly. The only really warm defender I 've heard of you, was one
from whom you probably least expected it.”
“And who might that be?”
“Can't you guess, Watty?”
“Harry Blake--Redmond--George Macartney?”
“Confound it, you don't think I mean a man!”
“A woman,--who could she be? Not Sally Talbot; not Lady Jane Rivers;
not--”
“Kitty Dwyer; and I think you might have guessed her before, Watty! It
is rather late, to be sure, to think of it; but my belief is that you
ought to have married that girl.”
“She refused me, Dan. She refused me,” said my father, growing red,
between shame and a sense of irritation.
“There 's a way of asking that secures a refusal, Watty. Don't tell me
Kitty was not fond of you. I ought to know, for she told me so herself.”
“She told you so,” cried my father, slowly.
“Ay, did she. It was in the summer-house, down yonder. You remember the
day you gave a great picnic to the Carbiniers; they were ordered off to
India, and you asked them out here to a farewell breakfast. Well, I did
n't know then how badly matters were with me. I thought at least that I
could scrape together some thirteen or fourteen hundreds a year; and I
thought, too, that I had a knowledge of the world that was worth as much
more, and that Kitty Dwyer was just the girl that suited me. She was
never out of humor, could ride anything that ever was backed, did
n't care what she wore, never known to be sick, sulky, nor sorry for
anything; and after a country dance that lasted two hours, and almost
killed everybody but ourselves, I took her a walk round the gardens,
and seated her in the summer-house there. I need n't tell all I said,”
continued he, with a sigh. “I believe I could n't have pleaded harder
for my life, if it was at stake; but she stopped me short, and,
squeezing my hand between both of hers, said: 'No, Dan, this cannot be,
and you are too generous to ask me why.' But I was not! I pressed her
all the more; and at last--not without seeing a tear in her eye, too--I
got at her secret, and heard her say your name. I swore by every saint
we could either of us remember, never to tell this to man or mortal
living; and I suppose, in strict fact, I ought n't to do so now; but, of
course, it 's the same thing as if you were dead, and you, I well know,
will never breathe it again.”
“Never!” said my father, and sat with his head on his hand, unable to
utter a word more.
“Poor Kitty!” said Dan, with a heavy sigh, while he balanced his spoon
on the edge of his teacup. “I half suspect she is the only one in the
world that you ever seriously wronged, and yet she is the very first to
uphold you.”
“But you are unjust, Dan,--most unjust,” cried my father, warmly. “There
was a kind of flirtation between us--I don't deny it,--but nothing more
than is always going forward in this free-and-easy land of ours, where
people play with their feelings as they do with their fortunes, and are
quite astonished to discover, some fine morning, that they have fairly
run through both one and the other. I liked her, and she perhaps liked
me, somewhat better than any one else that she met as often. We got
to become very intimate; to feel that in the disposal of our leisure
hours--which meant the livelong day--we were excessively necessary to
each other; in fact, that if our minds were not quite alike, our tastes
were. Of course, before one gets that far, one's friends, as they call
themselves, have gone far beyond it. There's no need of wearying you
with detail. Somebody, I 'm sure I forget who it was, now took occasion
to tell me that I was behaving ill to Kitty; that unless I really
intended seriously,--that's the paraphrase for marriage,--my attentions
were calculated to do her injury. Ay, by Jove! your match-making
moralists talk of a woman as they would of a horse, and treat a broken
flirtation as if it were a breach of warranty. I was, I own it, not a
little annoyed at the unnecessary degree of interest my friends insisted
on taking in my welfare; but I was not fool enough to go to war with the
world single-handed, so I seemed to accept the counsel, and went my way.
That same day, I rode out with Kitty. There was a large party of us, but
by some chance we found ourselves side by side and in an avenue of the
wood. Quite full as my mind was of the communication of the morning, I
could not resist my usual impulse, which was to talk to her of any or
every thing that was uppermost in my thoughts. I don't mean to say, Dan,
that I did so delicately, or even becomingly, for I confess to you I had
grown into that kind of intimacy whose gravest fault is that it has
no reserve. I 'm quite certain that nothing could be worse in point of
taste or feeling than what I said. You can judge of it from her reply:
'And are you such a fool, Walter, as to cut an old friend for such silly
gossip?' I blundered out something in defence of myself,--floundered
away into all kinds of stupid, unmeaning apologies, and ended by asking
her to marry me. Up to that moment we were conversing in all the freedom
of our old friendship, not the slightest reserve on either side; but no
sooner had I uttered these words than she turned towards me with a look
so sad and so reproachful, I did not believe that her features could
have conveyed the expression, while, in a voice of deepest emotion, she
said: 'Oh, Walter, this from you!' I was brute enough--there 's only one
word for it--to misunderstand her; and, full of myself and the splendid
offer I had made her, and my confounded _amour propre_, I muttered
something about the opinion of the world, the voice of friends, and so
on. 'Tell your friends, then,' said she, and with such an emphasis on
the word,--'tell your friends that I refused you!' and giving her mare a
tremendous cut of the whip, she dashed off at speed, and was up with the
others before I had even presence of mind to follow her.”
“You behaved devilish badly,--infamously. If I 'd been her brother, I'd
have shot you like a dog!” cried Dan, rising, and walking the room.
“I see it,” said my father, covering his face with his handkerchief.
“I am sorry I said that, Watty,--I don't mean that,” said Dan, laying
his hand on my father's shoulder. “It all comes of that infernal system
of interference! If they had left you alone, and to the guidance of your
own feelings, you 'd never have gone wrong. But the world will poke
in its d----d finger everywhere. It's rather hard, when good-breeding
protests against the bystander meddling with your game at chess, that he
should have the privilege of obtruding on the most eventful incident of
your existence.”
“Let us never speak of this again, Dan,” said my father, looking up with
eyes that were far from clear.
MacNaghten squeezed his band, and said nothing.
“What have you been doing with Tony Fagan, Dan?” said my father,
suddenly. “Have you drawn too freely on the Grinder, and exhausted the
liberal resources of his free-giving nature?”
“Nothing of the kind; he has closed his books against me this many a
day. But why do you ask this?”
“Look here.” And he opened a drawer and showed a whole mass of papers,
as he spoke. “Fagan, whom I regarded as an undrainable well of
the precious metals, threatens to run dry; he sends me back bills
unaccepted, and actually menaces me with a reckoning.”
“What a rascal, not to be satisfied with forty or fifty per cent!”
“He might have charged sixty, Dan, if he would only 'order the bill to
lie on the table.' But see, he talks of a settlement, and even hints at
a lawyer.”
“You ought to have married Polly.”
“Pray, is there any one else that I should have married, Dan?” cried my
father, half angrily; “for it seems to me that you have quite a passion
for finding out alliances for me.”
“Polly, they say, will have three hundred thousand pounds,” said Dan,
slowly, “and is a fine girl to boot. I assure you, Watty, I saw her the
other day, seated in the library here; and with all the splendor of
your stained-glass windows, your gold-fretted ceiling, and your gorgeous
tapestries, she looked just in her place. Hang me, if there was a
particle of the picture in better style or taste than herself.”
“How came she here?” cried my father, in amazement. And MacNaghten now
related all the circumstances of Fagan's visit, the breakfast, and the
drive.
“And you actually sat with three hundred thousand pounds at your side,”
said my father, “and did not decamp with it?”
“I never said she had the money in her pocket, Watty. Egad! that would
have been a very tempting situation.”
“How time must have changed you, Dan, when you could discuss the
question thus calmly! I remember the day when you 'd have won the race,
without even wasting a thought on the solvency of the stakeholder.”
“Faith, I believe it were the wisest way, after all, Watty,” said he,
carelessly; “but the fact is, in the times you speak of, my conscience,
like a generous banker, never refused my drafts; now, however, she has
taken a circumspect turn, and I 'm never quite certain that I have not
overdrawn my account with her. In plain words, I could not bring myself
to do with premeditation what once I might have done from recklessness.”
“And so the scruple saved Polly?” cried my father.
“Just so; not that I had much time to reflect on it, for the blacks were
pulling fearfully, and Dan had smashed his splinter-bar with a kick.
Still, in coming up by the new shrubbery there, I did say to myself:
'Which road shall I take?' The ponies were going to decide the matter
for me; but I turned them short round with a jerk, and laid the whip
over their flanks with a cut,--the dearest, assuredly, I ever gave to
horseflesh, for it cost me, in all likelihood, three hundred thousand.”
“Who 'd have ever thought Dan MacNaghten's conscience would have been so
expensive!”
“By Jove, Watty, it's the only thing of value remaining to me. Perhaps
my creditors left it on the same polite principle that they allow a
respectable bankrupt to keep his snuff-box or his wife's miniature,--a
cheap complaisance that reads well in the newspapers.”
“The Grinder, of course, thought that he had seen the last of you,” said
my father, laughing.
“He as much as said so to me when I came back. He even went further,”
said Dan, reddening with anger as he spoke: “he proposed to me to go
abroad and travel, and that he would pay the cost. But he 'll scarcely
repeat the insolence.”
“Why, what has come over you all here? I scarcely know you for what I
left you some short time back. Dan Mac-Naghten taking to scruples, and
Tony Fagan to generosity, seem, indeed, too much for common credulity!
And now as to politics, Dan! What are our friends doing? for I own to
you I have not opened one of Bagwell's letters since I left Paris.”
“You 're just as wise as if you had. Tom has got into all that
Rotundo cant about the 'Convention,' and the 'Town Council,' and the
'Sub-Committee of Nine,' so that you'd not make anything out of the
correspondence. I believe the truth is, that the Bishop is mad, and they
who follow him are fools. The Government at first thought of buying them
over; but they now perceive it's a cheaper and safer expedient to
leave them to themselves and their own-indiscretions. But I detest the
subject; and as we 'll have nothing else talked of to-day at dinner,
I'll cry truce till then. Let us have a look at the stable, Watty. I
want to talk to you about the 'nags.'” And so saying, MacNaghten arose
from table, and, taking my father's arm, led him away into the garden.