'Ah! it is you, Joe?' replied the other. 'So you are turned footman, I see. If the master be like the man, it ought to be a shrewd establishment.'
'No,' replied Joe carelessly; 'he's not very like anything down in these parts, for he appears to be a gentleman.'
'Tell him I am here, and be d——d to you,' was the indignant reply, as the speaker threw himself into his chair and stirred the fire with his foot.
Suspecting at once who my visitor was, I motioned to Joe to leave the room, and proceeded to dress myself with all despatch. During the operation, however, my friend without manifested several symptoms of impatience: now walking the room with rapid strides, as he whistled a quick step; now beating the bars of the grate with a poker, and occasionally performing that popular war-dance, 'The Devil's Tattoo,' with his knuckles upon the table. At length his endurance seemed pushed to its limit, and he knocked sharply at the door, calling out at the same moment—
'I say, sir, time's up, if you please.'
The next moment I was before him.
Mr. Ulick Burke—for I need not say it was he—was a well-looking man, of about eight-and-twenty or thirty years of age. Although his height was below the middle size, he was powerfully and strongly made; his features would have been handsome, were it not for a certain expression of vulgar suspicion that played about the eyes, giving him a sidelong look when he spoke; this, and the loss of two front teeth from a fall, disfigured a face originally pleasing. His whiskers were large, bushy, and meeting beneath his chin. As to his dress, it was in character with his calling—a green coat cut round in jockey fashion, over which he wore a white 'bang-up,' as it was called, in one pocket of which was carelessly thrust a lash-whip; a belcher handkerchief, knotted loosely about his neck, buckskin breeches, reaching far down upon the leg, and top-boots completed his costume. I had almost forgotten a hat, perhaps the most characteristic thing of all. This, which once had been white, was now, by stress of time and weather, of a dirty drab colour, its crown dinged in several places, and the leaf jagged and broken, bespoke the hard usage to which it was subjected. While speaking, he held it firmly clutched in his ungloved hand, and from time to time struck it against his thigh, with an energy of manner that seemed habitual His manner was a mixture of timid embarrassment and vulgar assurance, feeling his way, as it were, with one, while he forgot himself with the other. With certain remnants of the class he originally belonged to, he had associated the low habitudes and slang phraseology of his daily associates, making it difficult for one, at first sight, to discover to which order he belonged. In the language of his companions, Click Burke 'could be a gentleman when he pleased it.'
How often have we heard this phrase, and with what a fatal mistake is it generally applied! He who can be a gentleman when he pleases, never pleases to be anything else. Circumstances may, and do, every day in life, throw men of cultivated minds and refined habits into the society of their inferiors; but while, with the tact and readiness that is their especial prerogative, they make themselves welcome among those with whom they have few, if any, sympathies in common, yet never by any accident do they derogate from that high standard that makes them gentlemen. So, on the other hand, the man of vulgar tastes and coarse propensities may simulate, if he be able, the outward habitudes of society, speaking with practised intonation and bowing with well-studied grace; yet is he no more a gentleman in his thought or feeling than is the tinselled actor, who struts the board, the monarch his costume would bespeak him. This being the 'gentleman when he likes' is but the mere performance of the character. It has all the smell of the orange-peel and the footlights about it, and never can be mistaken by any one who knows the world.
But to come back to Mr. Burke. Having eyed me for a second or two, with a look of mingled distrust and impertinence, he unfolded my note, which he held beneath his fingers, and said—
'I received this from you last night, Mr. ———'