had come across the one taken for the Rathaldron hunt, in which I
figured in full field toggery, my right hand caressing the shoulder of
Galloping Bess, my favorite hunter.
“In your uncle’s album,” she replied.
Of course it was that photograph, done while at the university, with
the lackadaisical expression around the eyes and a general limpness
about the form, while my garments bore the appearance of having been
constructed for the celebrated Irish giant. If I had had the artist in
my hands at that particular moment, it is possible that I might have
taken _his_ photograph with something akin to a vengeance.
“Papa, this is mine host.” And she curtsied towards me after the
fashion of the ladies at the Court of St. James, when hoops were worn
at the hips and patches and powder held their parti-colored sway. I
grasped the little man by the hand, telling him fervently that his
acquaintance was the greatest favor ever bestowed upon me by my uncle,
that my house was his home, together with several similar expressions
of intense good-will and of the liveliest satisfaction. How I inwardly
anathematized my seedy coat, my unkempt beard, and above all the
jingling shandradan with its villanous pair of _garrons_ standing at
the exit gate! I believe I offered Miss Hawthorne my arm to lead her to
the vehicle in question, calling loudly to Peter O’Brien, who acted in
the duplicate capacity of coachman and butler. Finding that my servant
failed to respond to the summons, I flung open the door of the
carriage, and was about to hand her into it, when, to my utter shame,
misery, and mortification, I beheld my missing retainer rolled up like
a ball in the space between the seats, fast asleep, and snoring like a
fog-horn. In a blaze of indignation I caught him by the coat-collar,
with the intention of giving him a shake that would rattle him into an
eel-like liveliness; but while in the act of inserting my fingers
deftly around the collar, so as to afford me the grip necessary to the
effectual carrying out of my intention, he suddenly awoke from his
slumbers, and, upon perceiving the condition of affairs, with the howl
of a startled wolf, plunged upwards with such overwhelming force as to
cause me to lose my hold, to lurch against the step of the carriage,
carrom off the open door, and lastly, O agony! O shame! to measure my
full length in the dusty roadway, whilst a shout of laughter from
porters, passengers, and by-standers, in which I could detect the
silvery notes of Miss Hawthorne, greeted my tingling ears. I sprang to
my feet, full of the intention of throttling the misguided rascal, but
was restrained, _bon gré mal gré_, on discovering him upon his knees in
the centre of a sympathizing audience, whom he was addressing with
astonishing volubility ere I could possibly interpose.
“O mother o’ Moses! I was overkem wud sleep; an’ shure I’m not for to
blame afther all, for never a sight o’ me bed I seen last night till
daylight this blessed mornin’. But shure I’d sit up for a month like a
Banshee for his honor, av it divarted him. Let me aff this wanst,
Masther Fred, an’ I’ll carry ye up to bed every night in—”
Deeming it advisable to stop this dangerous harangue as speedily as
possible, as I found myself quietly dropping from out of the frying-pan
into the fire, and as, in his anxiety to make out a good case for
himself, the rascal was using me as a scapegoat, I sternly bade him
look to his horses.
Finding himself once more approaching the sunshine of favor, he hastily
scrambled to his feet, and, before I could intercept his movement, had
commenced to rub me down as if I were one of the quadrupeds under his
especial care, accompanying each vigorous rub with that purring sound
wherein the groom proper delights to indulge.
“Bad cess to it for dirt! it ‘ill never come out,” he began, as, with a
slap that brought tears to my eyes, he endeavored to remove the dust
from the back of my coat.
“Silence, sir! Go to your box!” I shouted, as I handed Miss Hawthorne
into the shandradan, placing her father beside her, and my miserable,
humiliated self opposite directly beneath the perilous influence of her
violet eyes.
“I trust, Miss Hawthorne,” I blurted, as we started for Kilkenley,
“that you are not too deeply influenced by first impressions?”
“Will you permit me to be very Irish, and answer your question by
putting another? Are _you_?”
Despite my late discomfiture, my unkempt hair, my gloveless hands, and
general seediness, I had sufficient grace within me to gaze for one
brief second into her lovely eyes until red as a rose was she, and
reply with a well-toned emphasis: “Most decidedly.”
I then, in a disjointed and desultory way, endeavored to explain why so
shaky a vehicle had been sent to the station; why Peter O’Brien’s hat
was so brown and bore such traces of snail-creeping from brim to crown;
why I had turned out so shabbily; why the horses were so slow—in a
word, it was the old story of _qui s’excuse s’accuse_, and my
explanations, such as they were, will ever remain a matter of the
profoundest mystery to myself, as I never by any possibility could
recall their tenor to my memory.
I believe that during the drive Mr. Hawthorne spoke a good deal of my
uncle, of London, Parliament, late hours, divisions, of the Home-Rule
question, and upon several other equally agreeable and interesting
topics, all of which seemed to afford the most exquisite delight to
Peter O’Brien, who sat perched sideways upon the box, with one eye
approvingly upon the “mimber” and the other skewise upon the road; but
as for me, I was so lost in contemplating the charms of my _vis-à-vis_
that the eloquence of the member for Doodleshire was as completely
wasted as if he were addressing Mr. Speaker himself.
Miss Hawthorne only spoke upon two occasions—once to comment upon the
beauty of the foliage at Ballyknockscroggery, the name amusing her
immensely, and which she endeavored to repeat with a childlike glee;
and once to ask about my mother—but the sounds were as music, and my
ears quaffed the delicious, dreamy draught with greedy avidity. How
those nine miles passed I never knew; they seemed but so many yards.
Peter kept “a trot for the avenue,” and brought us to a standstill with
a jerk that spoke volumes in favor of the anxiety of the screws for a
respite from their labors. I handed the young and lovely girl to my
mother, who stood upon the steps awaiting our approach, and, having
escorted Mr. Hawthorne to his room, retired to my own in a whirlwind of
new and pleasing emotion—ay, new and pleasing indeed!
I ate no dinner. What cared I for food? Mabel Hawthorne’s presence
enthralled me with an undefinable ecstasy. Every gesture, every
movement seemed fraught with a new-born grace, while her every word
filled my very being as with melody. I envied my mother that she talked
so much to her; I envied Harry Welstone for looking so confoundedly
handsome and because he sat opposite to her; I envied Peter when she
addressed even a “yes” or “no” to him; I envied her father, who called
her “Mabel” and “darling.” Heigh-ho! How I hated the approach of that
fatal moment when the conventionalities demanded the withdrawal of the
ladies—a cruel and barbarous custom, and I said so. She brushed past me
as I held the door open, her eyes lifting themselves like violets from
beneath the leafy lashes; and when she had glided away on my mother’s
arm, I felt that the light had ceased to live in the apartment. I
longed for a cigar in the stillness of the autumn night, surrounded by
the lordly gloom of nature, and yearned for the priceless _abandon_ of
my own musings. But, as in duty bound, I descended to the realities and
the ‘34 claret.
“A good wine, sir,” exclaimed Mr. Hawthorne, smacking his lips and
cunningly holding his glass between the lamp and his left eye; the
right being carefully closed. “A grand wine, sir. A comet vintage, sir.
Mr. Speaker has no wine like this; and the Speaker of the House of
Commons has the best cellar in England, sir.”
Mr. Hawthorne spoke solemnly. His sentences seemed carefully weighed,
and were delivered with an unctuousness that bespoke considerable
satisfaction with himself. He addressed me as if I were the Speaker of
the House of Commons, and as though he were desirous of catching my
eye. Some persons hold you with their eye. It’s not pleasant. He was
one of this class.
“It’s a ‘34, sir; you are quite correct. My poor father was very
particular about his cellar. I have too much of it; you must permit me
to send you a dozen at Christmas.” What would I not give _her_ father?
“On the condition that you will come and help me to drink it, sir.”
Need I say how profuse were my thanks? This was a chance—to see her in
her own home, too.
“We live in the Regent’s Park, York Terrace. Our windows command a very
pleasing prospect. It’s a nice walk for me to the House, and from my
roof I can tell by the electric light in the clock tower whether the
House is sitting or not. This is of immense importance, as to lose a
division very often means to lose a seat—ha! ha! ha!”
I must be forgiven if I joined in this melancholy merriment.
“Full well I laughed, with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he.”
I kicked Harry Welstone beneath the table as a signal to join in, but
he maintained a grim, stolid silence. He told me subsequently that it
wasn’t to be done at any price.
“You may not possibly have heard Mr. Disraeli’s last, gentlemen,” said
Mr. Hawthorne, placing his left hand inside his waistcoat and
flourishing the right in my direction. “It’s—ha! ha!—so _very_ like
Dizzy that—ha! ha!—I cannot help repeating it.” Here he laughed
“consumedly” for fully a minute.
The reader is possibly acquainted with some one man who cozens time by
inward chuckles at his own conceits. It is a melancholy ordeal to have
to endure this individual, to reflect back his dulness, and to return
smile for smile. All bores are terrors, but the worst class of bore is
the political; he is the embodiment, the concentrated essence, the
amalgam and epitome of bores. He mounts his dreary Rosinante, and jogs
along, taking acts of Parliament for milestones and the dullest
utterances in the lives of eminent men as his halting-places, quoting
long-winded, meaningless speeches as epigrams, and paralyzing his
auditory with wooden extracts from a blue-book of exploded theories.
His pertinacity is as inexhaustible as it is undaunted; he is free from
the faintest suspicion of self-distrust; he is a bore within a bore. Of
course, as the father of Mabel, Mr. Hawthorne interested _me_, and I
listened with a reverence that begat the reputation of a shrewd,
sensible fellow—an encomium never heretofore passed upon me under any
circumstance whatsoever.
“The Right Honorable the senior member for the city of Dublin,”
commenced Mr. Hawthorne, after his merriment had cooled off a little,
“is—ha! ha!—a Mr. Jonathan Pim, Quaker, and a laborious statistician.
The House likes a statistician on the budget or in committee, but we
will not have him in debate—no, gentlemen, we will not tolerate him in
debate. A question arose in which I had fruitlessly endeavored to catch
the Speaker’s eye—the Speaker is, by the bye, no particular friend of
mine, as I once overruled his decision on a point of order;
consequently, I seldom get an opportunity of speaking, and am compelled
to write to the _Times_. Well, gentlemen, as I was observing, a
question came up in which the Right Honorable the senior member for the
city of Dublin felt himself interested, and he made a very creditable
speech, bristling with figures—quite a surprise to some of us; but it
bored us, gentlemen, and the House will not tolerate a bore.”
Harry trod upon my toe; my boots were tight—I involuntarily groaned.
“I perceive that you agree with me,” said the M.P.; “the affliction
_is_ terrible.”
“Awful!” said Harry, peeling a plum.
“Well, gentlemen, the Right Honorable gentleman, the senior member for
the city of Dublin, had—ha! ha!—just concluded his speech, when Mr.
Disraeli, who sat upon the Opposition benches, said to the honorable
member for Shrewsbury, who sat behind him, and placing his eyeglass up
so”—suiting the action to the word—
“‘Who is this person?’
“‘Mr. Pim, sir, the senior member for the city of Dublin,’ responded
the honorable member for Shrewsbury.
“‘Oh! indeed. Dublin used to send us a gentleman and a blackguard; this
creature is neither.’”
This was not quite so bad, and we joined the honorable member for
Doodleshire in his mirth, which continued long after our responsive
haw-haws had become things of the past.
Mr. Hawthorne, being thus encouraged, was good enough to enliven us
with a prolonged description of his original Parliamentary yearnings,
his first and unsuccessful contest, and his subsequent triumphant
victory—a victory which we were led to believe was unparalleled in the
annals of electioneering struggles, and one that caused a thrill of
dismay all along the entire line of the great conservative party. We
were solemnly inducted into the forms of the House, from the entrance
of a newly-fledged member to his maiden speech. We were initiated into
the mysteries of the “Opposition benches,” the “gangway,” the “table,”
the “bar,” the duties of the “whip” and the “tellers,” the _modus
operandi_ as regards notices of motion and divisions, the striking of
committees, and the rules of Parliament generally, until we were
surfeited _ad nauseam_. These pleasing preliminaries having been
satisfactorily gone through, Mr. Hawthorne very obligingly proceeded to
give us brief biographical sketches of Gladstone, Bright, Disraeli,
Northcote, Hartington, and other leading men of that august assembly,
dilating upon the peculiarities in their style and the mistakes in
their several Parliamentary careers, until I wished him—in the
drawing-room. The windows were open, and across the sensuous night-glow
came sweet, soothing strains from the piano, now in low, wailing
cadences soft and sorrow-laden as the cry of the Banshee, now in the
dashing brilliancy, the _élan_ of those chromatic fireworks which none
but the most skilled pyrotechnist dare handle save _à deux mains_.
“Miss Hawthorne is at the piano,” I ventured, in the earnest hope that
her father, in the pride of parental fondness, might suggest an
adjournment.
“Yes, yes,” coolly and imperturbably.
“She plays divinely.”
“Rubinstein, who gave her lessons at I’m ashamed to say how much per
lesson, said she was his best amateur pupil. But, as I was observing,
Mr. Gladstone pronounces some words very strangely; for instance, issue
he always pronounces ‘issew,’ and Mr. Bright invariably says ‘can’t’
for ‘cawnt.’”
After a dissertation of about half an hour’s duration upon the Marquis
of Hartington’s lisp, the unwieldy oratory of Ward Hunt, Mr. Roebuck’s
‘no,’ and Mr. Whalley’s ‘heaw, heaw,’ I again hinted at an adjournment,
and on this occasion with a view to a general move, suggested the
billiard-room.
“Ah! no, my dear sir, we overworked members of the legislature value
too much the delightful tranquillity of our claret to ‘rush things,’ as
they say in America. We must make hay while the sun shines. How many
nights during the coming session shall I not have to snap at my food
with the ting! ting! of the division-bell ringing in my ear! How often
have I just raised my soup to my lips, when ting! ting! and away into
the House or to the division-lobby, and back to find it cold.
Fish!—ting! ting!” playfully tapping a wine-glass with his
dessert-knife by way of illustration. “Entrée!—ting! ting! And as for
wine, I have been compelled, ay, six nights out of the seven, to gulp
it, gentlemen. Fancy gulping claret as a navvy tosses off a quart of
ale. _Festina lente_, young gentlemen. Make haste slowly with your
dinner and your post-prandial wine; the pace of the tortoise is the
winning, and assuredly the most pleasant, one.”
Harry Welstone, who had been sipping his claret in dogged silence,
suddenly started from his chair, and exclaiming, “By Jove! she’s
playing _Les Baisers d’Amour_; excuse me, Fred,” hurriedly quitted the
apartment, leaving me in a condition of the deepest dejection, and
writhing under the dreary torture of the Parliamentary _souvenirs_ of
the member for Doodleshire.
“I—ha! ha!—call to mind another _mot_ of Mr. Disraeli’s; not at all a
bad one, either,” continued the M.P., deliberately attacking a fresh
decanter of claret—attacking it in that steady, methodical way which
indicated a determination to reduce it by slow degrees to the last
extremity. “Dizzy says a thing, sir, in a quaint, dry way peculiarly
his own—_Multum in parvo_ I call it—and he looks so demure, seated upon
the Opposition bench in his short black velvet coat, and caressing his
daintily-booted left foot upon his right knee. One night during the
last session a very particular friend of mine, Sir Brisbane Bullflier,
the junior member for Hants, happened to ask him what he thought of Mr.
Gladstone. Dizzy turned his gaze toward the government benches, and
coolly surveying the prime minister, who was parrying an adroit
question, said, as he calmly surveyed him:
“‘Mr. Gladstone is a man without a single redeeming vice.’”
My heart was in the drawing-room, where I now imagined Harry Welstone
leaning with his elbows upon the piano and his chin upon his hands (his
favorite position when my mother played for him), gazing at Mabel—I had
commenced to think of her by this gracious and winsome name—uttering
some of his daring _facetiæ_, and being rewarded by a glance from those
bewildering violet eyes, while I, bound in the iron fetters of a vile
conventionalism, was compelled to listen to “I thus addressed the
Speaker: ‘Mr. Speaker, sir,’” or, “I called for a division, sir, and
insisted upon explaining to the House my motives for adopting this
somewhat daring and untoward course,” and “Would you believe it, sir,
the _Times_ never noticed my speech upon the church disestablishment;
it is positively amusing—ha! ha! ha!”; his face bore no traces of the
amusement in question—“and that contemptible rag, the _Daily
Telegraph_, merely mentioned that the honorable member for Doodleshire
said a few words which were inaudible—this, sir, to a speech that cost
me three weeks in the preparation and three hours in the delivery.”
This sort of thing under ordinary circumstances, would have been dry
and prosy enough, but under the special conditions of the case it
became simply unbearable.
I suggested cigars; he didn’t smoke. A Bras Mouton instead of Château
Lafitte; he preferred the existing vintage. Coffee I dared not venture
upon, and I relinquished the hopeless struggle with a weary sigh. He
was there for the evening, and in that spot he would remain until the
contents of the decanter had disappeared.
“Do you take an active part in politics, Mr. Ormonde?” he asked after a
prolonged silence, during which I had the dismal satisfaction of
hearing the strains of a _valse brillante_, accompanied by an
occasional ripple of laughter, wafted in through the windows.
“None whatever.”
“No?” uttered in a tone almost of dismay.
“No, sir. Our country is in the hands of an Orange _clique_, who will
not allow a Catholic to hold a position of any consequence whatever.
The representation is, as a matter of course, in their hands, and the
family of De Ruthven have supplied the members since the sacking of
Drogheda under Cromwell, and will continue so to do, although, perhaps,
under the recent Ballot Act some outsider may get a chance, There are
but two Catholics in the grand panel. I am one of them, and was never
even summoned to attend until I threatened to horsewhip the high
sheriff. My colleague is what we call in this country a
‘Cawtholic’—that is, one who invariably votes with the Orange party,
and who would drink the great, glorious, pious, and immortal King
William in preference to the health of Pius the Ninth.”
“You have done away with that absurd toast,” said Mr. Hawthorne.
“Not at all, sir; it is given at every dinner-party in the country, and
it was once given in this very room.”
“In this room? Why, I thought you Ormondes were always out-and-out
papists.”
“And so we have been, and so we are. I’ll tell you how it happened. My
father—God be merciful to him!—was always noted for his hospitality,
and one evening, after a hard run with the Bohernabreena hounds, he
invited the hunt, at least as many as were in at the death, home to
dinner, sending a boy across the bog with the news to my mother.”
“‘I haven’t much to offer you to eat, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘but we’ll
make it up in the liquor.’
“About twenty gentlemen rode over here, and, after having dined in a
scratch sort of way, they plunged on the claret—this identical wine.”
“It is too good for fox-hunters,” observed my guest. “Such liquid
nectar is for brain-workers like _me_.”
“After a very joyous carouse one of the party, called ‘Orange Dick,’ a
Mr. Templeton, of Ashbrooke Hall, about ten miles from this, a deputy
lieutenant and J.P., stood up and asked permission to propose a toast.
The permission was freely accorded by my father, and full bumpers were
called for. When the glasses were all filled and the company on their
feet, Mr. Templeton gave the memory of the great, glorious, pious, and
immortal King William, which was received with three times three, my
father, to the astonishment of one or two, joining in.
“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said my father, ‘I drank your toast; you’ll drink
mine. Fill your glasses.’
“They required but little inducement to do as he bade, and in an
instant were in readiness.
“‘To your feet, gentlemen.’
“This order having been complied with—for it was given as such, and not
as a request—my father shouted in a voice of thunder:
“‘Here’s to the sorrel nag that broke King William’s neck.’”
Mr. Hawthorne was about to enter into the question of the Hanoverian
succession, and had already briefly sketched the career of the Prince
of Orange, when Peter entered, and, approaching me as though he were
treading upon eggs, whispered in a voice which betrayed a vigorous
_razzia_ upon the decanter, and sufficiently loud to make itself
distinctly overheard:
“The sooner the punch is riz the betther, sir; the kittle’s gettin’
cowld an’ the mould fours is runnin’ low.”
Inwardly cursing the fellow’s garrulity, I proposed to my guest that we
should join the ladies.
“Begorra, yez may save yourselves the thrubble, gintlemin, for it’s in
their beds th’ are”; here he lowered his voice into a whisper solely
addressed to my ear: “The young leddy axed me confidintial: ‘When will
he be comin’ to the dhrawin’-room?’ sez she.
“‘Not till he’s had his five,’ sez I.
“‘What five?’ sez she.
“‘Tumblers av punch, miss!’ sez I. “An’ didn’t I do well, Masther Fred,
for to keep up the credit av’ the family?”
My hands clenched involuntarily, preparatory to making themselves
acquainted with the body of my blundering retainer, when Mr. Hawthorne,
upon whom the fatigue of the journey, and perhaps his Parliamentary
reminiscences, had produced a somniferous effect, suggested following
the good example of the ladies—a proposition which I joyfully acceded
to. I assisted him to his bed-chamber, where, after listening to a very
lengthened and no doubt excessively profound disquisition upon a
proposed amendment in the Irish Poor-Law Act, I left him to “nature’s
sweet restorer,” and, gruffly refusing to partake of a night-cap with
Harry Welstone, lighted a cigar and went out into the night.
What a revolution had taken place in my existence within a few hours!
Behind yonder lighted casement a young girl was preparing for rest, the
very thoughts of whom, but a short while back, were a source of
mortification and chagrin, and now—love and light and joy beckoned me
towards her, drawing me to her by a chain of roses.
TO BE CONTINUED.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A CHILD-BEGGAR.
Soul, from thy casement look, and thou shalt see
How he persists to knock and wait for thee!
—LOPE DE VEGA, _Longfellow’s Translation_.