THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW IRELANDER.
“I’m afraid your shooting party is spoiled,” said my mother, handing me a letter across the breakfast-table in the well-known hieroglyphics of my Uncle Jimmy.
“I should hope not,” I retorted, as the expedition in question had been looked forward to with considerable pleasure, on account of Harry Welstone, my old chum at the Catholic University, having announced his intention of “turning the head of his dromedary to the desert of Kilkenley,” the name of my ancestral seat, in the snug morning-room of which my mother and myself were discussing cream, tea, new-laid eggs, and crisp rashers.
My Uncle Jimmy’s note, addressed to my mother, his only sister, ran thus:
“United Service Club,
“London, Sept. 10.
“My dear Susey: My old and valued friend, Mr. Fribscombe Hawthorne, the member for Doodleshire, is most anxious to treat Ireland fairly on the Home-Rule question. He is well disposed towards the Green Isle, and the country cannot afford to lose an ally in this crisis. Freddy [myself], although no politician, manages his tenants exceedingly well, and I should like Hawthorne to learn that at least one Irish landlord can live upon his estate without fear of bullet or bludgeon. Hawthorne leaves to-night, and will stop at the Shelborne Hotel, Dublin. Tell Freddy to drop him a line, asking him to put up at Kilkenley, and to give him some of that Sneyd and Barton claret which I love, not wisely but too well. My enemy is at work on my big toe, but I hope to be with you as usual at Christmas. The grouse were capital, fat and large, and I am on the look-out for partridge. Your affectionate brother,
“Jimmy L’Estrange.”
“P.S. I forgot to mention that Hawthorne’s daughter accompanies him; you had better enclose a note to her.
“J. L’E.”
“Confound it!” I cried, “it’s really too bad of Uncle Jimmy to saddle us with some dried-up statistician and his mummy daughter. You must write to him, madre mia, saying that I am at Derravanagh and beyond reach of post and wire.”
“If your uncle wasn’t very anxious about this he would never write so urgently; and don’t you think a little sacrifice is due to him?”
My mother was in the right. A moment’s reflection told me that my uncle’s letter was as forcible as an act of Parliament.
“Besides,” added my mother, with a cheery smile like a ray of sunshine, “this Mr. Hawthorne may be a sportsman and enjoy the shooting as keenly as Harry Welstone or yourself.”
My uncle was, or I should say is—for while I write he is enjoying a pipe in the company of Barney Corcoran, who stands to him in the same capacity as did Corporal Trim to “My Uncle Toby”—as thorough a gentleman as ever saw the light of day. Simple, unassuming, loyal, generous, brave, he actually refused the recommendation for the Victoria Cross, in order that a fair-haired boy, whose very soul was set upon its possession, might receive the decoration. Pure-minded and good, he is at once, as Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche.
Jimmy entered the army in the year 1847, roving about with his regiment from clime to clime with a superb indifference as to change of scene, but with a fervid determination to remain with the gallant Thirty-third; and it was only when the Crimean war-cloud loomed overhead that he resolved upon quitting the old corps for one under orders for the East. One-half of the fighting Thirty-third volunteered with him, and the great redoubt at the Alma is steeped in the blood of many a gallant fellow who chose to follow the fortunes of Jimmy L’Estrange.
Jimmy was badly hit at Inkerman, and was sent home invalided, to be nursed by my mother. In a few months, however, he returned to the seat of war, only to be knocked over at the taking of the Redan, which he entered side by side with the dashing Tom Esmonde, where, in addition to a bayonet thrust in the chest, he was made the depositary of a bullet in the right leg. This bullet, clumsily extracted by an unskilful surgeon, constitutes the only decoration my uncle deigns to wear, and he carries it suspended from the steel chain attached to a huge gold watch formerly in possession of his great-grandfather, to whom King James presented it ere he rode from the disastrous battle-field of the Boyne.
Jimmy has eight thousand pounds lent out at four per cent., and lives like a nabob at his London club—reading the Army and Navy Gazette all the morning, gossiping with his former companions-in-arms during the afternoon, sunning himself in the park until dinner-time, and playing shilling whist up to his wonted hour for turning in for the night. He spends three months in every year at Kilkenley, during which, by a judicious course of open air, early hours, plain food, and ‘34 claret, he is enabled to undertake the London campaign with renewed vigor and vitality.
Visions of a crabbed, hard-headed, hard-fact, singularly uninteresting Englishman crossed my mind as I helplessly gazed at my uncle’s epistle—of mornings spent in debating the question of Home Rule versus Imperial legislation; of days engaged in quoting acts of Parliament and compiling statistics; of evenings behind the horror of a white choker, passed in dissecting and arranging these statistics, converting figures into facts, and facts into figures—this dreary drudgery instead of the delectable society of the bright, happy, and joyous Harry Welstone, of mornings on the hillside, of days in the turnip-fields looking for the identical partridge of which my uncle had made honorable mention in his letter, of evenings whirled through in chatting over old times and old associations. What cared I for Mr. Butt or Home Rule, the land question, fixity of tenure, tenant right, and such bother? If my tenants required time to pay the rent, they got it. If they required help toward fencing, draining, top-dressing, or thatching, they got it. If they were twelve months in arrear, they came to my mother to plead for them; if over that period, they invariably waited for the annual visit of my Uncle Jimmy, in order to utilize him as ambassador; and my private opinion is, that upon one occasion, in order to keep up the credit of a family distantly related to his valet, Barney Corcoran, he paid the rent himself. I dare not hint at such a thing, but I feel thoroughly assured that the money came out of his own pocket. In the end, however, things generally came right, and delay in this case did not prove dangerous.
I read my uncle’s epistle twice, confounded him once, and contented myself by showering mild maledictions upon the heads of his English friends with a fervor that bore witness to my feelings of chagrin and disappointment.
The letters were duly written to Mr. and Miss Hawthorne and forwarded to the Shelborne.
“An’ yez are not goin’ to Derravanagh?” asked Ned Clancy, my game-keeper, in tones betraying the deepest dejection—“afther all me thrubble wud the birds, an’ the dogs blue-mowlded for a set. Begorra, I dunno what I’ll do wud the poor bastes. I tould thim we wor aff in the mornin’, an’ now be me song it’s at home they’ll have for to stay an’ set gruel.”
“I’m sorry to say I can’t go, Ned, as I expect an English gentleman and his daughter to visit us”; and, wishing to impress him with their importance, added: “He is a member of Parliament, and is coming over to study the Home-Rule question.”
My addendum failed to produce the desired effect.
“An’ much he’ll larn here,” observed Clancy with a toss of his head. “Av he axes the quollity for information, sorra an information they have for to give him; an’ if he axes the poorer soart, they’ll only cod him, bad cess to him!”
Ned Clancy was even more fatally “sold” than I by the postponement of our visit to Derravanagh; for a certain blue-eyed colleen, the daughter of a “warm” farmer living close to the shooting-lodge, had succeeded in stirring tender emotions in the region lying beneath Mr. Clancy’s waistcoat on the left side, which, while productive of joy, were equally productive of pain, since the sunshine of her presence was unhappily counterbalanced by the very prolonged shadow of her absence. Forty miles lay between him and the object of his admiration; and although there are but seventy thousand four hundred yards in forty miles, still it is a long road for a gentleman to travel, unless he is pretty certain of his welcome, and as yet Ned Clancy had “never told his love.”
“Mebbe yer honor wud like for to show this English gintleman the counthry; an’ shure, in regard to scenery, there’s no batin’ Derrynacushla all the ways be Derravanagh. Sorra a finer sight nor the view from Ballyknocksheelin hill; it flogs Rooshia, Ashia, an’ Africa—so Misther Corcoran, yer uncle’s boy, tould me; an’ shure he ought for to know, be raisin’ av his havin’ travelled all the world, likewise Arabia.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too far, Ned.”
“Far!” he contemptuously ejaculated—“a few dirty mile, an’ the horses atin’ their heds aff. Lily av the Valley darted through her stall this mornin’, an’ it tuk me an’ a cupple more for to hould Primrose.”
This was special pleading with a vengeance.
“Mebbe the gintleman wud take a gun. Give him a lind av Miss Blake, sir. She goes aff soft an’ aisy, an’ wudn’t rub the dew aff th’ eyebrow av a grasshopper. Blur an’ ages, Masther Fred! for th’ honor av ould Ireland give him a shot. The birds is as thick as hayves, an’ he cudn’t miss thim no more nor a haystack; an’ shure,” he added, “anything he misses I’ll be on the luk out for, so betune us we’ll make it soft anyhow.”
“It’s not to be done, Ned; besides, Miss Hawthorne accompanies her father, and she possibly would not like to separate from him.”
“Bad cess to thim for wimmen!” he muttered, as he tossed the gun across his shoulders; “they spile everything. I wish they wor niver invinted.”
In the course of post two very polite letters reached us, one addressed to my mother from Miss Hawthorne, the other to myself from the M.P., accepting the invitation and stating that the writer would leave Dublin by the one o’clock train upon the following day, reaching Ballyvoreen station at 5.30.
The letters were excellently well written, both as regards style and caligraphy, especially that of the lady, whom I now felt assured must be a distinguished member of the Social Science or of the British Association.
“They will be here to-morrow, mother. How on earth are we to amuse them? We are in for it now, and must do our best to make their visit agreeable. I know little, and care less, about Home Rule, so I’ll hand Mr. Hawthorne over to Myles Casey, of Loftus Park, who opposed our present member. Father O’Dowd, too, will give this base, bloody, and brutal Saxon enough to think about for a dozen sessions of Parliament. I’ll do my part like a man.”
“We must give a dinner-party,” said my mother with a weary sigh, visions of unpacking the family plate, which had not seen the light of day since my poor father’s death, floating across her mind’s eye. “I can drive Miss Hawthorne about the country and pay visits.”
“Don’t trouble yourself about her, mother. She’ll be able to amuse herself. Show her the old quarry at Rathnamon, and she can geologize until she’s black in the face. Or bring her to Carrignageena, and she’ll find ferns to bother her; and if she’s a dab at antiquities, the old church at Bohernacapple ought to put her on the treadmill for a week. There is one tombstone there that has bewildered Sir William Wilde and the entire Royal Irish Academy.”
“She may be interested in the Home-Rule question,” suggested my mother with a smile, adding: “And perhaps political economy is her forte.”
“In that case I’ll hand her over to Harry Welstone. He can talk Adam Smith, Martin Tupper, and Stuart Mill. He can enlighten her on the land question as well as A. M. Sullivan or Mitchel Henry; and he shall do it as sure as my name is Frederick Fitzgerald Ormonde. Besides, he can imitate Gladstone, Bright, Toole, Mathews, and Buckstone. He’s just the sort of fellow to encounter this antediluvian female, and, if such a thing were within the realms of possibility, metamorphose her.”
Visitors to a country house, should the entertainers be not in the habit of receiving company, are about the severest penances that can by any possibility be inflicted. Everything requires to be turned topsy-turvy for them—beds, bedrooms, furniture, carpets, “fixins’” of every description. The cellar must be overhauled and confidential conferences held with the cook. The “trap” used for knocking about the roads and attending markets and fairs must be shoved aside, and the family coach put into formidable requisition. The horses must be clipped, while the harness is found to be defective and a new whip an absolute necessity. The very door-mats suggest renovation.
As regards Harry Welstone, his room and his tub were always ready. I would have felt no hesitation in quartering him on the house-top, and the only preparation I went in for with reference to his visit was a scrupulous overhauling of the billiard-table. Having no person to practise with except Martin Heaviside of the Grove, or Captain O’Reilly of the Connaught Rangers when home on leave, the cushions became more like bags of sand than those springy, elastic walls from which the pale white or the blushing red ball bounds gaily towards the coquettish pocket or the artfully-arranged collision of the carrom. With the aid of Ned Clancy—who, in addition to being game-keeper, was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades—and the usual formulæ, I succeeded in imparting the necessary tone to the table, and was satisfied that Harry would scarcely fail to appreciate the utility of the preparations.
I felt no anxiety whatever to “show off” to the English member of Parliament, while I honestly confess to a burning desire to appear the “correct thing” in the eyes of my old college chum; and while I ordered a homely vehicle called the shandradan—half pilentum, half brougham, very old, very rickety, and very seedy—to meet Mr. and Miss Hawthorne upon the following day, I turned out my own dog-cart, built by Bates, of Gorey—stained ash, brass-boxed wheels, brass-mounted harness, ‘possum rug, with Lily of the Valley and Primrose tandem—in order to bowl Harry Welstone from Ballyvoreen station to the lodge gate, nine miles, in the forty minutes.
In accordance with preconcerted arrangement, I met Harry, hugged him, whacked him on the back, refreshed him from my flask, rolled him in the ‘possum rug as though the mercury were in the tens below zero, and almost yelled with pleasure the entire way back.
Is any meeting equal to the meeting of old school-fellows?
Ay de mi! no.
He had grown much stouter and much handsomer. His eyes were more romantically dark, and his black moustache, which I recollected so well in its struggling tooth-brush infancy, was now pointed after the fashion of the third Napoleon.
After he had received a cordial welcome from my mother I dragged him up to his room, and there we sat talking over Jim Cooper, that went to the diggings, and Bobby Thyne, now a leader at the Indian bar, and Tom O’Brien, who was a Jesuit, and Phil Dempsey, whose last speech on circuit had elicited the warm encomiums of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald; of the Corbet girls, and the Walshs’ picnic at the Dargle, when Harry fell overhead into the river in a chivalrous endeavor to pluck a maiden-hair fern for Miss Walsh, and a host of similar delightful souvenirs, until the dinner-bell rang.
“Harry, my old bird, what will you dip your beak into—claret or the ding-dong?”
“Well, I stand by the solid liquor, Fred, but the pace is too heavy.”
Over our punch we resumed the conversation on the olden, golden time. Ah! how weary, as we approach the end, to look back at the milestones we have passed on our journey. Why did we tarry here, why not have rested there, why not have halted for good and aye? With us it was couleur de rose. We had no shadows to sadden memory. Our gossip was of our college days, when life was on the spring and every nerve braced for the forthcoming struggle. We talked late into the night, disregarding dove-like messages from the ark announcing coffee.
The next day Harry went on a ferreting expedition with Ned Clancy, and my mother was too deeply immersed in household affairs to be enabled to take my place and go to meet our expected guests; so, with feelings of no very amiable description, I threw myself, all untidy and ill-dressed as I was, into the shandradan, and jingled the nine miles to Ballyvoreen behind as sorry a pair of nags as ever ploughed a nine-acre field.
I had to wait at the station, as of course the train was five-and-twenty minutes late, and I was seriously hoping that some untoward accident had occurred which would retard its progress for four-and-twenty hours at the very least, when it came creaking and groaning in. Just as I had anticipated, a tall, grim, gaunt, elderly gentleman alighted, followed by a tall, grim, gaunt, elderly young lady, with a nose as sharp as a shilling razor, wearing her hair in wiry curls, and dragging by a long blue ribbon a plunging, howling, ill-visaged pug. The sight of the dog was somewhat of a relief to me, as I foresaw the miserable existence he was likely to lead with my two Skye terriers—a counterpart of the torture I should be compelled to endure with his master and mistress.
“Mr. Hawthorne, I presume,” bowing and lifting my hat.
He bowed stiffly.
I repeated the question, fearing, perhaps, that he had not heard me.
“You are mistaken, sir,” in freezing tones. “I am Lord Mulligatawney.”
“I was mistaken.”
Apologizing for the error, I looked up the line and perceived in the distance—for the train was a long one—a well-dressed, dapper little man engaged in lugging a valise from beneath the seat of a first-class carriage. “This must be my guest,” thought I, advancing, and as I reached the carriage the portmanteau came to earth with a chuck that nearly precipitated its proprietor into an adjacent hedge. Following the “leathern conveniency,” and with a spring graceful as that of a gazelle, a young girl alighted from the compartment. She was small but exquisitely proportioned. Her hair, pure gold, was wound round the back of her head in ponderous plaits. Her eyes were of that blue which in certain lights cries “check” unto the violet. Her nose was straight and delicately shaped, but not in the least classical. Her mouth was large, full, and generous, and adorned with flashing white teeth, somewhat irregular, it is true, but in their irregularity lay a special charm all their own. She was attired in a shepherd’s plaid silk travelling dress, a Die Vernon hat with a sweeping blue feather almost caressing her left shoulder, and her dainty little hands were encased in black kid gauntleted gloves. Struck by her singular grace and beauty, I remained staring at her—staring like a schoolboy at a waxen effigy.
“You are Mr. Ormonde,” she said laughingly, and advancing towards me.
“You are Miss Hawthorne,” I stammered.
“I am, and papa, as usual, is fussing about our luggage—impedimenta you scholars call it nowadays. I knew you from your photograph. It is so kind of you to come and meet us.” She put out her hand as she said this in a winning, confiding way that was fraught with captivation. I bowed over the tips of her fingers in respectful reverence, scarcely daring to touch her hand.
“May I ask where you saw my photograph?” I asked, inwardly hoping she 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.