MR. BLAKE.
Nothing but the exigency of the case could ever have persuaded my uncle to
stoop to the humiliation of canvassing the individual to whom I was now
about to proceed as envoy-extraordinary, with full powers to make any or
every _amende_, provided only his interest and that of his followers should
be thereby secured to the O’Malley cause. The evening before I set out was
devoted to giving me all the necessary instructions how I was to proceed,
and what difficulties I was to avoid.
“Say your uncle’s in high feather with the government party,” said Sir
Harry, “and that he only votes against them as a _ruse de guerre_, as the
French call it.”
“Insist upon it that I am sure of the election without him; but that for
family reasons he should not stand aloof from me; that people are talking
of it in the country.”
“And drop a hint,” said Considine, “that O’Malley is greatly improved in
his shooting.”
“And don’t get drunk too early in the evening, for Phil Blake has beautiful
claret,” said another.
“And be sure you don’t make love to the red-headed girls,” added a third;
“he has four of them, each more sinfully ugly than the other.”
“You’ll be playing whist, too,” said Boyle; “and never mind losing a few
pounds. Mrs. B., long life to her, has a playful way of turning the king.”
“Charley will do it all well,” said my uncle; “leave him alone. And now let
us have in the supper.”
It was only on the following morning, as the tandem came round to the door,
that I began to feel the importance of my mission, and certain misgivings
came over me as to my ability to fulfil it. Mr. Blake and his family,
though estranged from my uncle for several years past, had been always most
kind and good-natured to me; and although I could not, with propriety, have
cultivated any close intimacy with them, I had every reason to suppose that
they entertained towards me nothing but sentiments of good-will. The head
of the family was a Galway squire of the oldest and most genuine stock, a
great sportsman, a negligent farmer, and most careless father; he looked
upon a fox as an infinitely more precious part of the creation than a
French governess, and thought that riding well with hounds was a far better
gift than all the learning of a Parson. His daughters were after his
own heart,--the best-tempered, least-educated, most high-spirited, gay,
dashing, ugly girls in the county, ready to ride over a four-foot paling
without a saddle, and to dance the “Wind that shakes the barley” for four
consecutive hours, against all the officers that their hard fate, and the
Horse Guards, ever condemned to Galway.
The mamma was only remarkable for her liking for whist, and her invariable
good fortune thereat,--a circumstance the world were agreed in ascribing
less to the blind goddess than her own natural endowments.
Lastly, the heir of the house was a stripling of about my own age, whose
accomplishments were limited to selling spavined and broken-winded horses
to the infantry officers, playing a safe game at billiards, and acting as
jackal-general to his sisters at balls, providing them with a sufficiency
of partners, and making a strong fight for a place at the supper-table for
his mother. These fraternal and filial traits, more honored at home than
abroad, had made Mr. Matthew Blake a rather well-known individual in the
neighborhood where he lived.
Though Mr. Blake’s property was ample, and strange to say for his county,
unencumbered, the whole air and appearance of his house and grounds
betrayed anything rather than a sufficiency of means. The gate lodge was a
miserable mud-hovel with a thatched and falling roof; the gate itself, a
wooden contrivance, one half of which was boarded and the other railed; the
avenue was covered with weeds, and deep with ruts; and the clumps of young
plantation, which had been planted and fenced with care, were now open to
the cattle, and either totally uprooted or denuded of their bark and dying.
The lawn, a handsome one of some forty acres, had been devoted to an
exercise-ground for training horses, and was cut up by their feet beyond
all semblance of its original destination; and the house itself, a large
and venerable structure of above a century old, displayed every variety of
contrivance, as well as the usual one of glass, to exclude the weather. The
hall-door hung by a single hinge, and required three persons each morning
and evening to open and shut it; the remainder of the day it lay pensively
open; the steps which led to it were broken and falling; and the whole
aspect of things without was ruinous in the extreme. Within, matters were
somewhat better, for though the furniture was old, and none of it clean,
yet an appearance of comfort was evident; and the large grate, blazing with
its pile of red-hot turf, the deep-cushioned chairs, the old black mahogany
dinner-table, and the soft carpet, albeit deep with dust, were not to be
despised on a winter’s evening, after a hard day’s run with the “Blazers.”
Here it was, however, that Mr. Philip Blake had dispensed his hospitalities
for above fifty years, and his father before him; and here, with a retinue
of servants as _gauches_ and ill-ordered as all about them, was he
accustomed to invite all that the county possessed of rank and wealth,
among which the officers quartered in his neighborhood were never
neglected, the Miss Blakes having as decided a taste for the army as any
young ladies of the west of Ireland; and while the Galway squire, with
his cords and tops, was detailing the latest news from Ballinasloe in one
corner, the dandy from St. James’s Street might be seen displaying more
arts of seductive flattery in another than his most accurate _insouciane_
would permit him to practise in the elegant salons of London or Paris, and
the same man who would have “cut his brother,” for a solecism of dress or
equipage, in Bond Street, was now to be seen quietly domesticated, eating
family dinners, rolling silk for the young ladies, going down the middle
in a country dance, and even descending to the indignity of long whist at
“tenpenny” points, with only the miserable consolation that the company
were not honest.
It was upon a clear frosty morning, when a bright blue sky and a sharp but
bracing air seem to exercise upon the feelings a sense no less pleasurable
than the balmiest breeze and warmest sun of summer, that I whipped my
leader short round, and entered the precincts of “Gurt-na-Morra.” As I
proceeded along the avenue, I was struck by the slight traces of repairs
here and there evident,--a gate or two that formerly had been parallel to
the horizon had been raised to the perpendicular; some ineffectual efforts
at paint were also perceptible upon the palings; and, in short, everything
seemed to have undergone a kind of attempt at improvement.
When I reached the door, instead of being surrounded, as of old, by a tribe
of menials frieze-coated, bare-headed, and bare-legged, my presence was
announced by a tremendous ringing of bells from the hands of an old
functionary in a very formidable livery, who peeped at me through the
hall-window, and whom, with the greatest difficulty, I recognized as my
quondam acquaintance, the butler. His wig alone would have graced a king’s
counsel; and the high collar of his coat, and the stiff pillory of his
cravat denoted an eternal adieu to so humble a vocation as drawing a cork.
Before I had time for any conjecture as to the altered circumstances about,
the activity of my friend at the bell had surrounded me with “four others
worse than himself,” at least they were exactly similarly attired; and
probably from the novelty of their costume, and the restraints of so
unusual a thing as dress, were as perfectly unable to assist themselves
or others as the Court of Aldermen would be were they to rig out in plate
armor of the fourteenth century. How much longer I might have gone on
conjecturing the reasons for the masquerade around, I cannot say; but my
servant, an Irish disciple of my uncle’s, whispered in my ear, “It’s a
red-breeches day, Master Charles,--they’ll have the hoith of company in the
house.” From the phrase, it needed little explanation to inform me that it
was one of those occasions on which Mr. Blake attired all the hangers-on
of his house in livery, and that great preparations were in progress for a
more than usually splendid reception.
In the next moment I was ushered into the breakfast-room, where a party of
above a dozen persons were most gayly enjoying all the good cheer for which
the house had a well-deserved repute. After the usual shaking of hands and
hearty greetings were over, I was introduced in all form to Sir George
Dashwood, a tall and singularly handsome man of about fifty, with an
undress military frock and ribbon. His reception of me was somewhat
strange; for as they mentioned my relationship to Godfrey O’Malley, he
smiled slightly, and whispered something to Mr. Blake, who replied, “Oh,
no, no; not the least. A mere boy; and besides--” What he added I lost, for
at that moment Nora Blake was presenting me to Miss Dashwood.
If the sweetest blue eyes that ever beamed beneath a forehead of snowy
whiteness, over which dark brown and waving hair fell less in curls than
masses of locky richness, could only have known what wild work they were
making of my poor heart, Miss Dashwood, I trust, would have looked at her
teacup or her muffin rather than at me, as she actually did on that fatal
morning. If I were to judge from her costume, she had only just arrived,
and the morning air had left upon her cheek a bloom that contributed
greatly to the effect of her lovely countenance. Although very young, her
form had all the roundness of womanhood; while her gay and sprightly manner
indicated all the _sans gêne_ which only very young girls possess, and
which, when tempered with perfect good taste, and accompanied by beauty and
no small share of talent, forms an irresistible power of attraction.
Beside her sat a tall, handsome man of about five-and-thirty or perhaps
forty years of age, with a most soldierly air, who as I was presented to
him scarcely turned his head, and gave me a half-nod of very unequivocal
coldness. There are moments in life in which the heart is, as it were, laid
bare to any chance or casual impression with a wondrous sensibility of
pleasure or its opposite. This to me was one of those; and as I turned from
the lovely girl, who had received me with a marked courtesy, to the cold
air and repelling _hauteur_ of the dark-browed captain, the blood rushed
throbbing to my forehead; and as I walked to my place at the table, I
eagerly sought his eye, to return him a look of defiance and disdain,
proud and contemptuous as his own. Captain Hammersley, however, never took
further notice of me, but continued to recount, for the amusement of those
about him, several excellent stories of his military career, which, I
confess, were heard with every test of delight by all save me. One thing
galled me particularly,--and how easy is it, when you have begun by
disliking a person, to supply food for your antipathy,--all his allusions
to his military life were coupled with half-hinted and ill-concealed
sneers at civilians of every kind, as though every man not a soldier were
absolutely unfit for common intercourse with the world, still more for any
favorable reception in ladies’ society.
The young ladies of the family were a well-chosen auditory, for their
admiration of the army extended from the Life Guards to the Veteran
Battalion, the Sappers and Miners included; and as Miss Dashwood was the
daughter of a soldier, she of course coincided in many of, if not all, his
opinions. I turned towards my neighbor, a Clare gentleman, and tried to
engage him in conversation, but he was breathlessly attending to the
captain. On my left sat Matthew Blake, whose eyes were firmly riveted
upon the same person, and who heard his marvels with an interest scarcely
inferior to that of his sisters. Annoyed and in ill-temper, I ate my
breakfast in silence, and resolved that the first moment I could obtain a
hearing from Mr. Blake I would open my negotiation, and take my leave at
once of Gurt-na-Morra.
We all assembled in a large room, called by courtesy the library, when
breakfast was over; and then it was that Mr. Blake, taking me aside,
whispered, “Charley, it’s right I should inform you that Sir George
Dashwood there is the Commander of the Forces, and is come down here at
this moment to--” What for, or how it should concern me, I was not to
learn; for at that critical instant my informant’s attention was called off
by Captain Hammersley asking if the hounds were to hunt that day.
“My friend Charley here is the best authority upon that matter,” said Mr.
Blake, turning towards me.
“They are to try the Priest’s meadows,” said I, with an air of some
importance; “but if your guests desire a day’s sport, I’ll send word over
to Brackely to bring the dogs over here, and we are sure to find a fox in
your cover.”
“Oh, then, by all means,” said the captain, turning towards Mr. Blake, and
addressing himself to him,--“by all means; and Miss Dashwood, I’m sure,
would like to see the hounds throw off.”
Whatever chagrin the first part of his speech caused me, the latter set my
heart a-throbbing; and I hastened from the room to despatch a messenger to
the huntsman to come over to Gurt-na-Morra, and also another to O’Malley
Castle to bring my best horse and my riding equipments as quickly as
possible.
“Matthew, who is this captain?” said I, as young Blake met me in the hall.
“Oh, he is the aide-de-camp of General Dashwood. A nice fellow, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know what you may think,” said I, “but I take him for the most
impertinent, impudent, supercilious--”
The rest of my civil speech was cut short by the appearance of the very
individual in question, who, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar in
his mouth, sauntered forth down the steps, taking no more notice of Matthew
Blake and myself than the two fox-terriers that followed at his heels.
However anxious I might be to open negotiations on the subject of my
mission, for the present the thing was impossible; for I found that Sir
George Dashwood was closeted closely with Mr. Blake, and resolved to wait
till evening, when chance might afford me the opportunity I desired.
As the ladies had retired to dress for the hunt, and as I felt no peculiar
desire to ally myself with the unsocial captain, I accompanied Matthew to
the stable to look after the cattle, and make preparations for the coming
sport.
“There’s Captain Hammersley’s mare,” said Matthew, as he pointed out a
highly bred but powerful English hunter. “She came last night; for as he
expected some sport, he sent his horses from Dublin on purpose. The others
will be here to-day.”
“What is his regiment?” said I, with an appearance of carelessness, but in
reality feeling curious to know if the captain was a cavalry or infantry
officer.
“The --th Light Dragoons,”
“You never saw him ride?” said I.
“Never; but his groom there says he leads the way in his own country.”
“And where may that be?”
“In Leicestershire, no less,” said Matthew.
“Does he know Galway?”
“Never was in it before. It’s only this minute he asked Moses Daly if the
ox-fences were high here.”
“Ox-fences! Then he does not know what a wall is?”
“Devil a bit; but we’ll teach him.”
“That we will,” said I, with as bitter a resolution to impart the
instruction as ever schoolmaster did to whip Latin grammar into one of the
great unbreeched.
“But I had better send the horses down to the Mill,” said Matthew; “we’ll
draw that cover first.”
So saying, he turned towards the stable, while I sauntered alone towards
the road by which I expected the huntsman. I had not walked half a mile
before I heard the yelping of the dogs, and a little farther on I saw old
Brackely coming along at a brisk trot, cutting the hounds on each side, and
calling after the stragglers.
“Did you see my horse on the road, Brackely?” said I.
“I did, Misther Charles; and troth, I’m sorry to see him. Sure yerself
knows better than to take out the Badger, the best steeple-chaser in
Ireland, in such a country as this,--nothing but awkward stone-fences, and
not a foot of sure ground in the whole of it.”
“I know it well, Brackely; but I have my reasons for it.”
“Well, may be you have; what cover will your honor try first?”
“They talk of the Mill,” said I; “but I’d much rather try Morran-a-Gowl.”
“Morran-a-Gowl! Do you want to break your neck entirely?”
“No, Brackely, not mine.”
“Whose, then, alannah?”
“An English captain’s, the devil fly away with him! He’s come down here
to-day, and from all I can see is a most impudent fellow; so, Brackely--”
“I understand. Well, leave it to me; and though I don’t like the only
deer-park wall on the hill, we’ll try it this morning with the blessing.
I’ll take him down by Woodford, over the Devil’s Mouth,--it’s eighteen foot
wide this minute with the late rains,--into the four callows; then over the
stone-walls, down to Dangan; then take a short cast up the hill, blow him
a bit, and give him the park wall at the top. You must come in then fresh,
and give him the whole run home over Sleibhmich. The Badger knows it all,
and takes the road always in a fly,--a mighty distressing thing for the
horse that follows, more particularly if he does not understand a stony
country. Well, if he lives through this, give him the sunk fence and the
stone wall at Mr. Blake’s clover-field, for the hounds will run into the
fox about there; and though we never ride that leap since Mr. Malone broke
his neck at it, last October, yet upon an occasion like this, and for the
honor of Galway--”
“To be sure, Brackely; and here’s a guinea for you, and now trot on towards
the house. They must not see us together, or they might suspect something.
But, Brackely,” said I, calling out after him, “if he rides at all fair,
what’s to be done?”
“Troth, then, myself doesn’t know. There is nothing so bad west of Athlone.
Have ye a great spite again him?”
“I have,” said I, fiercely.
“Could ye coax a fight out of him?”
“That’s true,” said I; “and now ride on as fast as you can.”
Brackely’s last words imparted a lightness to my heart and my step, and I
strode along a very different man from what I had left the house half an
hour previously.