THE SPIRIT OF IRELAND
When General Grampound took his leave of Mr Boxall, Mr Boxall rose from
his bed and resumed those garments he had relinquished before taking his
place between the sheets. Having nothing else to do, and to kill the
time, he took his place at the writing-table near the window, and
proceeded to write letters.
The window gave a view over the stable roofs of a country more beautiful
than a picture. The park, and the pools, heron-haunted, and lying under
the grey sky of winter, made a picture tenderly tinted as an aquarelle;
the fields, the woods, the moorlands, the dim and distant hills of
Glynn, how beautiful they were seen through that illusive atmosphere,
the air of Ireland!
The air of Ireland, the moist and crystal-clear air, what a magician it
is! what a wealth of illusion it holds, and voiceless poetry!
Till you have known its influence, you never can know how far-off hills
can draw you towards them, or what voices can haunt the glens. When you
have known its influence you will know more of that mysterious secret
“Ireland” than all the gaol reports, agricultural reports and Blue Books
can teach you—if you are a poet.
Mr Boxall was not a poet. He had come over to Ireland for two reasons,
firstly, to be in the same house with Violet Lestrange; secondly, to
study Ireland and the Irish. He was not a poet, but a practical man.
Now, the pursuit of Love is as dangerous a pursuit for a practical man
as the study of the Irish in their own home.
Love hates practical people, so does the spirit of Ireland. The spirit
of Ireland had given Mr Boxall a bang on the head with a soot bag, and
Love had locked him up in his room; and, being a practical man without a
grain of humour in his mass, he could not see the joke, or take the
hint.
Take the hint—ah! what a lot of philosophy lies in those three words!
Watch a French punter at Monte Carlo: fortune declares against him, and
he takes the hint and stops; your stolid Englishman does not even see
the hint: he takes it as a personal insult, goes on, and gets broken.
Mr Boxall did not even see the hint, and, here, let me point out to the
unintelligent reader that, perhaps symbolism rather than low comedy is
served by the presence—and sometimes absence—of Mr Boxall’s glass eye in
this book.
Whilst he was finishing his letters, he could hear an indistinct
murmuring of voices from the stable-yard below. It was Moriarty
discoursing on cluricaunes. He heard the yell emitted by Micky Mooney on
being kicked off the bucket by Larry Lyburn, and the subsequent
bellowings and blubberings of that seer. He would have put his head out
of the window to enquire the meaning of it, but for ocular reasons.
“D—d savages!” said Mr Boxall. He had placed a muffler round his neck
for the sake of appearances, should any other member of the household
call upon him to enquire after his health. No one came, however. Uncle
Molyneux had too much dread of influenza, and, as for Dicky Fanshawe, he
was busy in other directions.
At five o’clock a servant brought up tea, which was placed, by direction
of the power inside, on the mat before the bedroom door. When the
servant had withdrawn, the invalid, opening the door cautiously, fetched
in the tray.
Mr Boxall did not keep a man. Though he had several thousand a year and
a tin mine, he was a careful person, who turned a penny twice over
before he parted with it, and then, as often as not, put it back in his
pocket; yet, though miserly in small things, he gave considerably to
well-organised charities, and he had been known to commit quite
unexpected and kindly acts.
He was in fact, an excellent citizen, but he was a man utterly without a
sense of humour, the poetry of life was for him not; and, though he had
been known to utter noises indicative of mirth at parliamentary dinners,
Laughter, that happy sprite, never sat upon his lips.
One might imagine stiff and starched individuals of this description
incapable of romantic attachment; unfortunately they are not. They enter
the lists of love, and they go to the encounter heavily armed.
A man who is able to hurl a tin mine at your head is not to be despised.
Adonis himself would stand a poor chance nowadays against a man armed
with great blocks of London North Western and other railway shares.
The fight between the Boxalls and the Fanshawes of Society is a pretty
equal encounter, even though the Fanshawes are fairly well provided with
earthly goods.
As Mr Boxall was finishing his lonely tea, a knock came to the door,
followed by a voice through the keyhole.
“Misther Boxall,” said the voice, “are yiz there? The young lady’s
wishful to see you; be on the laan in front of the house be half-past
tin o’clock, sharp.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr Boxall. “Who is there—what’s that’s you say?”
No answer.
“Who is there?”
No answer.
Mr Boxall went to the door, opened it cautiously two inches or so and
peeped out; there was no one visible. He opened it fully and put his
head out: the corridor was empty. Then he closed the door, and pacing
his room ruminated over the message he had just received.
The only young lady in the house was Violet Lestrange; that the message
referred to her he could not doubt, that the message had come to him
from the lips of a servant was undeniable. The sex of the servant he
could not tell, for the voice was muted, yet it sounded female.
If you were to imagine that the message gave him any thrill, or caused
him any pleasurable excitement, you would be vastly mistaken.
He felt very much irritated. The whole thing was out of order, and
utterly inexplicable. He had chosen Violet Lestrange to act in the
capacity of his future wife, firstly, because she was of good family,
and was not of the flighty order of women; secondly, because her great
beauty appealed to the man in him.
By no word or act up to this had she shaken his high opinion of her, and
now from the mouth of a servant came this extraordinary invitation to
meet her on the lawn at half-past ten.
Besides, she knew that he had the influenza, and, knowing that, she had
asked him to leave his bed and meet her at this untimely hour. This
aggrieved him almost as much as the “fastness” of the proposition.
Then the horrible thought came to him—can she know the real reason? He
dismissed this at once. Besides, she would hardly call him out on the
lawn late at night to commiserate with him on the loss of an eye,
especially considering the nature of the eye, and the manner of its
losing.
At the foundation of his nature was a very snappish and nasty temper,
easily aroused and brought to the surface by little things. This had to
snap and snarl and have its say before pure reason could take the
situation and deal with it.
“Now,” said Pure Reason at last, “there is more in this than meets the
eye. Of course, she does not want to see me for any reason
connected—ahum—with our mutual esteem. She is a lady: she is not the
class of girl to compromise herself. No matter how much she cares for
me, she is the last person in the world to make a false move, unless
sudden insanity can have seized her: She has some powerful motive for
this, some very urgent reason.”
He lay down on his bed again revolving matters in his mind, and
presently General Grampound knocked at his door and came in to make
enquiries and propositions about dinner.
“Let them send me up a little chicken,” said the sufferer, “or anything
light—no champagne, thanks. I have put this bandage on to relieve the
pain. Thank you, I am better. I do not believe in drugs.”
The tea-things were removed, and the dinner was brought up by Patsy.
“Put it on the table, and don’t disturb those papers,” said Mr Boxall,
who was seated in an armchair with a bandage over the side of his head.
“Not on the papers—have you no sense?”
“Yes, sir,” said Patsy. “Can I be afther fetchin’ you anything more,
sir?”
“No; come up in half an hour for the tray.”
At ten o’clock Mr Boxall had made up his mind. The hall was generally
deserted at night; he would come downstairs, cross the hall, and leave
the house by the front door. If any one saw him, he could say that he
was going on the lawn for a breath of fresh air.
The bandage across his forehead he retained, and it, half covered by a
forage cap, gave him somewhat the appearance of a hospital out-patient
as, muffled in an overcoat, he descended the stairs at half-past ten and
crossed the hall to the front door. The door was only held by the catch;
Mr Boxall opened it, passed out, and closed it softly behind.
Less than five minutes later old James, whose duty it was to see things
settled for the night, put the chain on the front door and drew the
heavy bolts.
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