“My friend here has given it every possible opportunity,” said Heffernan, with a courteous inclination of the head.
“I've no doubt of it,” said St. George; “but neither money nor bank securities will make trees grow sixty feet in a twelvemonth. The improvements I allude to were made by Maurice Darcy's father; he sunk forty thousand pounds in draining, planting, subsoiling, and what not. He left a rent-charge in his will to continue his plans; and Maurice and his son—what's the young fellow called?—Lionel, isn't it?—well, they are, or rather they were, bound to expend a very heavy sum annually on the property.”
A theme less agreeable to O'Reilly's feelings could scarcely have been started; and though Heffernan saw as much, he did not dare to interrupt it suddenly, for fear of any unpalatable remark from St. George. Whether from feeling that the subject was a painful one, or that he liked to indulge his loquacity in detailing various particulars of the Darcys and their family circumstances, the old man went on without ceasing,—now narrating some strange caprice of an ancestor in one century, now some piece of good fortune that occurred to another. “You know the old prophecy in the family, I suppose, Mr. O'Reilly?” said he, “though, to be sure, you are not very likely to give it credence.”
“I scarcely can say I remember what you allude to.”
“By Jove, I thought every old woman in the west would have told it to you. How is this the doggerel runs—ay, here it is,—
'A new name in this house shall never begin
Till twenty-one Darcys have died in Gwynne.'
Now, they say that, taking into account all of the family who have fallen in battle, been lost at sea, and so on, only eleven of the stock died at the Abbey.”
Although O'Reilly affected to smile at the old rhyme, his cheek became deadly pale, and his hand shook as he lifted the glass to his lips. It was no vulgar sense of fear, no superstitious dread that moved his cold and calculating spirit, but an emotion of suppressed anger that the ancient splendor of the Darcys should be thus placed side by side with his own unhonored and unknown family.
“I don't think I ever knew one of these good legends have even so much of truth,—though the credit is now at an end,” said Heffernau, gayly.
“I'll engage old Darcy's butler wouldn't agree with you,” replied St. George. “Ay, and Maurice himself had a great dash of old Irish superstition in him, for a clever, sensible fellow as he was.”