CHAPTER II
ANOTHER REAPETH
‘Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt.’
During the course of a harum-scarum youth in the city of Dublin certain persons had been known to predict that Mr. Frederick Conyngham had a future before him. Mostly pleasant-spoken Irish persons these, who had the racial habit of saying that which is likely to be welcome. Many of them added, ‘the young divil,’ under their breath, in a pious hope of thereby cleansing their souls from guilt.
‘I suppose I’m idle, and what is worse, I know I’m a fool,’ said Conyngham himself to his tutor when that gentleman, with a toleration which was undeserved, took him severely to task before sending him up for the Bar examination. The tutor said nothing, but he suspected that this, his wildest pupil, was no fool. Truth to tell, Frederick Conyngham had devoted little thought to the matter of which he spoke, namely, himself, and was perhaps none the worse for that. A young man who thinks too often usually falls into the error of also thinking too much, of himself.
The examination was, however, safely passed, and in due course Frederick was called to the Irish Bar, where a Queen’s Counsel, with an accent like rich wine, told him that he was now a gintleman, and entitled so to call himself.
All these events were left behind, and Conyngham, sitting alone in his rooms in Norfolk Street, Strand, three days after the breaking of Sir John Pleydell’s windows, was engaged in realising that the predicted future was still in every sense before him, and in nowise nearer than it had been in his mother’s lifetime.
This realisation of an unpleasant fact appeared in no way to disturb his equanimity, for, as he knocked his pipe against the bars of the fire, he murmured a popular air in a careless voice. The firelight showed his face to be pleasant enough in a way that left the land of his birth undoubted. Blue eyes, quick and kind; a square chin, closely curling hair, and square shoulders bespoke an Irishman. Something, however, in the cut of his lips—something close and firm—suggested an admixture of Anglo-Saxon blood. The man looked as if he might have had an English mother. It was perhaps this formation of the mouth that had led those pleasant-spoken persons to name to his relatives their conviction that Conyngham had a future before him. The best liars are those who base their fancy upon fact. They knew that the ordinary thoroughbred Irishman has usually a cheerful enough life before him, but not that which is vaguely called a future. Fred Conyngham looked like a man who could hold to his purpose, but at this moment he also had the unfortunate appearance of not possessing one to hold to.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and held the hot briar bowl against the ear of a sleeping fox terrier, which animal growled, without moving, in a manner that suggested its possession of a sense of humour and a full comprehension of the harmless practical joke.
A moment later the dog sat up and listened with an interest that gradually increased until the door opened and Geoffrey Horner came into the room.
‘Faith, it’s Horner!’ said Conyngham. ‘Where are you from?’