Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I.

by Charles James Lever

If a cruel destiny compelled Mr. O'Reardon to serve the Saxon, he “took it out” in a most hearty hatred of his patron. He denounced him when he talked, and he reviled him when he sang. He treasured up paragraphs of all the atrocities of the English press, and he revelled in the severe strictures which the Irish papers bestowed on them. So far as hating went, he was a true patriot.

If some people opined that Mr. O'Reardon's political opinions rather partook of what was in vogue some sixty-odd years ago than what characterized a time nearer our own day, there were others, less generous critics, who scrupled not to say that he was a paid spy of the Government, and that all the secret organization of treason—all the mysterious plotting of rebellion that seems never to die completely out in Ireland—were known to and reported by this man to the Castle. Certain it was that he lived in a way his humble salary at the Four Courts could not have met, and indulged in convivial excesses far beyond the reach of his small income.

When Sir Brook and Tom Lendrick became his lodgers, he speedily saw that they belonged to a class far above what usually resorted to his humble house. However studiously simple they might be in all their demands, they were unmistakably gentlemen; and this fact, coupled with their evident want of all employment or occupation, considerably puzzled Mr. O'Reardon, and set him a-thinking what they could be, who they were, and, as he phrased it, “what they were at.” No letters came for them, nor, as they themselves gave no names, was there any means of tracing their address; and to his oft-insinuated request, “If any one asks for you, sir, by what name will I be able to answer?” came the same invariable “No one will call;” and thus was Mr. O'Reardon reduced to designate them to his wife as the “old chap” and the “young one,”—titles which Sir Brook and Tom more than once overheard through the frail partitions of the ill-built house.

It is not impossible that O'Reardon's peculiar habits and line of life disposed him to attach a greater significance to the seeming mystery that surrounded his lodgers than others might have ascribed; it is probable that custom had led him to suspect everything that was in any way suspicious. These men draw many a cover where there is no fox, but they rarely pass a gorse thicket and leave one undetected. His lodgers thus became to him a study. Had he been a man of leisure, he would have devoted the whole of it to their service; he would have dogged their steps, learned their haunts, and watched their acquaintances,—if they had any. Sunday was, however, his one free day, and by some inconceivable perversity they usually spent the entire of it at home.

The few books they possessed bore no names, some of them were in foreign languages, and increased thereby Mr. O'Reardon's suspicious distrust; but none gave any clew to their owners. There was another reason for his eagerness and anxiety; for a long time back Ireland had been generally in a condition of comparative quiet and prosperity; there was less of distress, and, consequently, less of outrage. The people seemed at length to rely more upon themselves and their own industry than on the specious promises of trading politicians, and Mr. O'Reardon, whose functions, I fear, were not above reproach in the matter of secret information, began to fear lest some fine morning he might be told his occupation was gone, and that his employers no longer needed the fine intelligence that could smell treason, even by a sniff; he must, he said, do something to revive the memory of his order, or the chance was it would be extinguished forever.

He had to choose between denouncing them as French emissaries or American sympathizers. A novel of Balzac's that lay on the table decided for the former, for he knew enough to be aware it was in French; and fortified with this fact, he proceeded to draw up his indictment for the Castle.

It was, it must be confessed, a very meagre document; it contained little beyond the writer's own suspicions. Two men who were poor enough to live in Avoca Villa, and yet rich enough to do nothing for their livelihood, who gave no names, went out at unseasonable hours, and understood French, ought to be dangerous, and required to be watched, and therefore he gave an accurate description of their general appearance, age, and dress, at the office of the Private Secretary, and asked for his “instructions” in consequence.

Mr. O'Reardon was not a bad portrait-painter with his pen, and in the case of Sir Brook there were peculiarities enough to make even a caricature a resemblance; his tall narrow head, his long drooping moustache, his massive gray eyebrows, his look of stern dignity, would have marked him, even without the singularities of dress which recalled the fashions of fifty years before.

Little, indeed, did the old man suspect that his high-collared coat and bell-shaped hat were subjecting him to grave doubts upon his loyalty. Little did he think, as he sauntered at evening along the green lanes in this retired neighborhood, that his thoughts ought to have been on treason and bloodshed.

He had come to the little lodging, it is true, for privacy. After his failure in that memorable interview with Sir William Lendrick, he had determined that he would not either importune the Viceroy for place, or would he be in any way the means of complicating the question between the Government and the Chief Baron by exciting the Lord-Lieutenant's interest in his behalf.