'Con has learnt one secret,' said Philip, quitting his chair.
Patrick went up to him, and, 'Give us a hug,' he said, and the hug was
given.
They were of an equal height, tall young men, alert, nervously braced
from head to foot, with the differences between soldier and civilian
marked by the succintly military bearing of the elder brother, whose
movements were precise and prompt, and whose frame was leopardlike in
indolence. Beside him Patrick seemed cubbish, though beside another
he would not have appeared so. His features were not so brilliantly
regular, but were a fanciful sketch of the same design, showing a wider
pattern of the long square head and the forehead, a wavering at the dip
of the nose, livelier nostrils: the nostrils dilated and contracted, and
were exceeding alive. His eyelids had to do with the look of his eyes,
and were often seen cutting the ball. Philip's eyes were large on the
pent of his brows, open, liquid, and quick with the fire in him. Eyes
of that quality are the visible mind, animated both to speak it and
to render it what comes within their scope. They were full, unshaded
direct, the man himself, in action. Patrick's mouth had to be studied
for an additional index to the character. To symbolise them, they were
as a sword-blade lying beside book.
Men would have thought Patrick the slippery one of the two: women would
have inclined to confide in him the more thoroughly; they bring feeling
to the test, and do not so much read a print as read the imprinting on
themselves; and the report that a certain one of us is true as steel,
must be unanimous at a propitious hour to assure them completely that
the steel is not two-edged in the fully formed nature of a man whom they
have not tried. They are more at home with the unformed, which lends
itself to feeling and imagination. Besides Patrick came nearer to them;
he showed sensibility. They have it, and they deem it auspicious of
goodness, or of the gentleness acceptable as an equivalent. Not the less
was Philip the one to inspire the deeper and the wilder passion.
'So you've been down there?' said Philip. 'Tell us of your welcome.
Never mind why you went: I think I see. You're the Patrick of fourteen,
who tramped across Connaught for young Dermot to have a sight of you
before he died, poor lad. How did Mr. Adister receive you?'
Patrick described the first interview.
Philip mused over it. 'Yes, those are some of his ideas: gentlemen are
to excel in the knightly exercises. He used to fence excellently, and he
was a good horseman. The Jesuit seminary would have been hard for him to
swallow once. The house is a fine old house: lonely, I suppose.'
Patrick spoke of Caroline Adister and pursued his narrative. Philip was
lost in thought. At the conclusion, relating to South America, he raised
his head and said: 'Not so foolish as it struck you, Patrick. You and I
might do that,--without the design upon the original owner of the
soil! Irishmen are better out of Europe, unless they enter one of the
Continental services.'
'What is it Con O'Donnell proposes to you?' Patrick asked him earnestly.
'To be a speaking trumpet in Parliament. And to put it first among the
objections, I haven't an independence; not above two hundred a year.'
'I'll make it a thousand,' said Patrick, 'that is, if my people can
pay.'
'Secondly, I don't want to give up my profession. Thirdly, fourthly,
fifthly, once there, I should be boiling with the rest. I never could
go half way. This idea of a commencement gives me a view of the finish.
Would you care to try it?'
'If I'm no wiser after two or three years of the world I mean to make
a better acquaintance with,' Patrick replied. 'Over there at home one
catches the fever, you know. They have my feelings, and part of my
judgement, and whether that's the weaker part I can't at present decide.
My taste is for quiet farming and breeding.'
'Friendship, as far as possible; union, if the terms are fair,' said
Philip. 'It's only the name of union now; supposing it a concession that
is asked of them; say, sacrifice; it might be made for the sake of what
our people would do to strengthen the nation. But they won't try to
understand our people. Their laws, and their rules, their systems are
forced on a race of an opposite temper, who would get on well enough,
and thrive, if they were properly consulted. Ireland 's the sore place
of England, and I'm sorry for it. We ought to be a solid square, with
Europe in this pickle. So I say, sitting here. What should I be saying
in Parliament?'
'Is Con at all likely, do you think, Philip?'
'He might: and become the burlesque Irishman of the House. There must be
one, and the lot would be safe to fall on him.'
'Isn't he serious about it?'
'Quite, I fancy; and that will be the fun. A serious fellow talking
nonsense with lively illustrations, is just the man for House of Commons
clown. Your humorous rogue is not half so taking. Con would be the
porpoise in a fish tank there, inscrutably busy on his errand and
watched for his tumblings. Better I than he; and I should make a worse
of it--at least for myself.'
'Wouldn't the secret of his happiness interfere?'
'If he has the secret inside his common sense. The bulk of it I suspect
to be, that he enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness; and
so the secret pulls both ways. One day a fit of pride may have him, or
one of his warm impulses, and if he's taken in the tide of it, I shall
grieve for the secret.'
'You like his wife, Philip?'
'I respect her. They came together,--I suppose, because they were near
together, like the two islands, in spite of the rolling waves between.
I would not willingly see the union disturbed. He warms her, and she
houses him. And he has to control the hot blood that does the warming,
and she to moderate the severity of her principles, which are an
essential part of the housing. Oh! shiver politics, Patrice. I wish I
had been bred in France: a couple of years with your Pere Clement, and
I could have met Irishmen and felt to them as an Irishman, whether they
were disaffected or not. I wish I did. When I landed the other day, I
thought myself passably cured, and could have said that rhetoric is
the fire-water of our country, and claptrap the springboard to send
us diving into it. I like my comrades-in-arms, I like the character of
British officers, and the men too--I get on well with them. I declare
to you, Patrice, I burn to live in brotherhood with them, not a rift of
division at heart! I never show them that there is one. But our early
training has us; it comes on us again; three or four days with Con have
stirred me; I don't let him see it, but they always do: these tales of
starvations and shootings, all the old work just as when I left, act on
me like a smell of powder. I was dipped in “Ireland for the Irish”; and
a contented Irishman scarcely seems my countryman.'
'I suppose it 's like what I hear of as digesting with difficulty,'
Patrick referred to the state described by his brother.
'And not the most agreeable of food,' Philip added.
'It would be the secret of our happiness to discover how to make the
best of it, if we had to pay penance for the discovery by living in an
Esquimaux shanty,' said Patrick.
'With a frozen fish of admirable principles for wife,' said Philip.
'Ah, you give me shudders!'
'And it's her guest who talks of her in that style! and I hope to be
thought a gentleman!' Philip pulled himself up. 'We may be all in the
wrong. The way to begin to think so, is to do them an injury and forget
it. The sensation's not unpleasant when it's other than a question of
good taste. But politics to bed, Patrice. My chief is right--soldiers
have nothing to do with them. What are you fiddling at in your coat
there?'
'Something for you, my dear Philip.' Patrick brought out the miniature.
He held it for his brother to look. 'It was the only thing I could get.
Mr. Adister sends it. The young lady, Miss Caroline, seconded me. They
think more of the big portrait: I don't. And it 's to be kept carefully,
in case of the other one getting damaged. That's only fair.'
Philip drank in the face upon a swift shot of his eyes.
'Mr. Adister sends it?' His tone implied wonder at such a change in
Adiante's father.
'And an invitation to you to visit him when you please.'
'That he might do,' said Philip: it was a lesser thing than to send her
likeness to him.
Patrick could not help dropping his voice: 'Isn't it very like?' For
answer the miniature had to be inspected closely.
Philip was a Spartan for keeping his feelings under.
'Yes,' he said, after an interval quick with fiery touches on the
history of that face and his life. 'Older, of course. They are the
features, of course. The likeness is not bad. I suppose it resembles her
as she is now, or was when it was painted. You 're an odd fellow to have
asked for it.'
'I thought you would wish to have it, Philip.'
'You're a good boy, Patrice. Light those candles we'll go to bed. I want
a cool head for such brains as I have, and bumping the pillow all night
is not exactly wholesome. We'll cross the Channel in a few days, and see
the nest, and the mother, and the girls.'
'Not St. George's Channel. Mother would rather you would go to France
and visit the De Reuils. She and the girls hope you will keep out of
Ireland for a time: it's hot. Judge if they're anxious, when it's to
stop them from seeing you, Philip!'
'Good-night, dear boy.' Philip checked the departing Patrick. 'You can
leave that.' He made a sign for the miniature to be left on the table.
Patrick laid it there. His brother had not touched it, and he could have
defended himself for having forgotten to leave it, on the plea that it
might prevent his brother from having his proper share of sleep; and
also, that Philip had no great pleasure in the possession of it. The
two pleas, however, did not make one harmonious apology, and he went
straight to the door in an odd silence, with the step of a decorous
office-clerk, keeping his shoulders turned on Philip to conceal his look
of destitution.