TWO FAMILIAR EPISTLES
There were a number of bolder achievements Gorman O’Shea would have dared rather than write a note; nor were the cares of the composition the only difficulties of the undertaking. He knew of but one style of correspondence—the report to his commanding officer, and in this he was aided by a formula to be filled up. It was not, then, till after several efforts, he succeeded in the following familiar epistle:—
‘KILGOBBIN CASTLE.
‘DEAR AUNT,—Don’t blow up or make a rumpus, but if I had not taken the mare and come over here this morning, the rascally police with their search-warrant might have been down upon Mr. Kearney without a warning. They were all stiff and cold enough at first: they are nothing to brag of in the way of cordiality even yet—Dick especially—but they have asked me to stay and dine, and, I take it, it is the right thing to do. Send me over some things to dress with—and believe me your affectionate nephew,
‘G. O’SHEA.
‘I send the mare back, and shall walk home to-morrow morning.
‘There’s a great Castle swell here, a Mr. Walpole, but I have not made his acquaintance yet, and can tell nothing about him.’
Towards a late hour of the afternoon a messenger arrived with an ass-cart and several trunks from O’Shea’s Barn, and with the following note:—
‘DEAR NEPHEW GORMAN,—O’Shea’s Barn is not an inn, nor are the horses there at public livery. So much for your information. As you seem fond of “warnings,” let me give you one, which is, To mind your own affairs in preference to the interests of other people. The family at Kilgobbin are perfectly welcome—so far as I am concerned—to the fascinations of your society at dinner to-day, at breakfast to-morrow, and so on, with such regularity and order as the meals succeed. To which end, I have now sent you all the luggage belonging to you here.—I am, very respectfully, your aunt, ELIZABETH O’SHEA.’
The quaint, old-fashioned, rugged writing was marked throughout by a certain distinctness and accuracy that betoken care and attention—there was no evidence whatever of haste or passion—and this expression of a serious determination, duly weighed and resolved on, made itself very painfully felt by the young man as he read.
‘I am turned out—in plain words, turned out!’ said he aloud, as he sat with the letter spread out before him. ‘It must have been no common quarrel—not a mere coldness between the families—when she resents my coming here in this fashion.’ That innumerable differences could separate neighbours in Ireland, even persons with the same interests and the same religion, he well knew, and he solaced himself to think how he could get at the source of this disagreement, and what chance there might be of a reconciliation.
Of one thing he felt certain. Whether his aunt were right or wrong, whether tyrant or victim, he knew in his heart all the submission must come from the others. He had only to remember a few of the occasions in life in which he had to entreat his aunt’s forgiveness for the injustice she had herself inflicted, to anticipate what humble pie Mathew Kearney must partake of in order to conciliate Miss Betty’s favour.
‘Meanwhile,’ he thought, and not only thought, but said too—‘Meanwhile, I am on the world.’
Up to this, she had allowed him a small yearly income. Father Luke, whose judgment on all things relating to continental life was unimpeachable, had told her that anything like the reputation of being well off or connected with wealthy people would lead a young man into ruin in the Austrian service; that with a sum of 3000 francs per annum—about £120—he would be in possession of something like the double of his pay, or rather more, and that with this he would be enabled to have all the necessaries and many of the comforts of his station, and still not be a mark for that high play and reckless style of living that certain young Hungarians of family and large fortune affected; and so far the priest was correct, for the young Gorman was wasteful and extravagant from disposition, and his quarter’s allowance disappeared almost when it came. His money out, he fell back at once to the penurious habits of the poorest subaltern about him, and lived on his florin-and-half per diem till his resources came round again. He hoped—of course he hoped—that this momentary fit of temper would not extend to stopping his allowance.
‘She knows as well as any one,’ muttered he, ‘that though the baker’s son from Prague, or the Amtmann’s nephew from a Bavarian Dorf, may manage to “come through” with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap three or four holes.
‘I’d go down to the ranks to-morrow rather than live that life of struggle and contrivance that reduces a man to playing a dreary game with himself, by which, while he feels like a pauper, he has to fancy he felt like a gentleman. No, no, I’ll none of this. Scores of better men have served in the ranks. I’ll just change my regiment. By a lucky chance, I don’t know a man in the Walmoden Cuirassiers. I’ll join them, and nobody will ever be the wiser.’
There is a class of men who go through life building very small castles, and are no more discouraged by the frailty of the architecture than is a child with his toy-house. This was Gorman’s case; and now that he had found a solution of his difficulties in the Walmoden Cuirassiers, he really dressed for dinner in very tolerable spirits. ‘It’s droll enough,’ thought he, ‘to go down to dine amongst all these “swells,” and to think that the fellow behind my chair is better off than myself.’ The very uncertainty of his fate supplied excitement to his spirits, for it is amongst the privileges of the young that mere flurry can be pleasurable.
When Gorman reached the drawing-room, he found only one person. This was a young man in a shooting-coat, who, deep in the recess of a comfortable arm-chair, sat with the Times at his feet, and to all appearance as if half dozing.
He looked around, however, as young O’Shea came forward, and said carelessly, ‘I suppose it’s time to go and dress—if I could.’
O’Shea making no reply, the other added, ‘That is, if I have not overslept dinner altogether.’
‘I hope not, sincerely,’ rejoined the other, ‘or I shall be a partner in the misfortune.’
‘Ah, you ‘re the Austrian,’ said Walpole, as he stuck his glass in his eye and surveyed him.
‘Yes; and you are the private secretary of the Governor.’
‘Only we don’t call him Governor. We say Viceroy here.’
‘With all my heart, Viceroy be it.’
There was a pause now—each, as it were, standing on his guard to resent any liberty of the other. At last Walpole said, ‘I don’t think you were in the house when that stupid stipendiary fellow called here this morning?’
‘No; I was strolling across the fields. He came with the police, I suppose?’
‘Yes, he came on the track of some Fenian leader—a droll thought enough anywhere out of Ireland, to search for a rebel under a magistrate’s roof; not but there was something still more Irish in the incident.’
‘How was that?’ asked O’Shea eagerly.
‘I chanced to be out walking with the ladies when the escort came, and as they failed to find the man they were after, they proceeded to make diligent search for his papers and letters. That taste for practical joking, that seems an instinct in this country, suggested to Mr. Kearney to direct the fellows to my room, and what do you think they have done? Carried off bodily all my baggage, and left me with nothing but the clothes I’m wearing!’
‘What a lark!’ cried O’Shea, laughing.
‘Yes, I take it that is the national way to look at these things; but that passion for absurdity and for ludicrous situations has not the same hold on us English.’
‘I know that. You are too well off to be droll.’
‘Not exactly that; but when we want to laugh we go to the Adelphi.’
‘Heaven help you if you have to pay people to make fun for you!’
Before Walpole could make rejoinder, the door opened to admit the ladies, closely followed by Mr. Kearney and Dick.
‘Not mine the fault if I disgrace your dinner-table by such a costume as this,’ cried Walpole.
‘I’d have given twenty pounds if they’d have carried off yourself as the rebel!’ said the old man, shaking with laughter. ‘But there’s the soup on the table. Take my niece, Mr. Walpole; Gorman, give your arm to my daughter. Dick and I will bring up the rear.’