He met Simon O’Dougherty when he had driven a few miles from the door; and, in a tone of much pique and displeasure, reproached him for having deceived him into a belief that the Grays were his friends. Simon was rather embarrassed; but the genius of gossiping had luckily just supplied him with a hint, by which he could extricate himself from this difficulty.
“The fault is all your own, if I may make so free as to tell you so. Sir Hyacinth O’Brien,” said he, “as capital an electioneerer as you are, I’ll engage I’ll find one that shall outdo you here. Send me and Stafford back again this minute to Rosanna, and we’ll bring you the three votes as dead as crows in an hour’s time, or my name is not O’Dougherty now.”
“I protest, Mr. O’Dougherty, I do not understand you.”
“Then let me whisper half a word in your ear, Sir Hyacinth, and I’ll make you sensible I’m right.” Simon winked most significantly, and looked wondrous wise; then stretching himself half off his horse into the gig to gain Sir Hyacinth’s ear, he whispered that he knew, from the best authority, Stafford was in love with Gray’s pretty daughter, Rose, and that Rose had no dislike to him; that she was all in all to her father and brothers, and of course could and would secure their votes, if properly spoken to.
This intelligence did not immediately produce the pleasing change of countenance which might have been expected. Sir Hyacinth coldly replied, he could not spare Stafford at present, and drove on. The genius of gossiping, according to her usual custom, had exaggerated considerably in her report. Stafford was attached to Rose, but had never yet told her so; and as to Rose, we might perhaps have known all her mind, if Sir Hyacinth’s gig had not appeared just as she was seated on her father’s knee, and going to tell him her reasons for wishing to go to the ball.
Stafford acted in the capacity of house-steward to the baronet; and had the management of all his master’s unmanageable servants. He had brought with him, from England, ideas of order and punctuality, which were somewhat new, and extremely troublesome to the domestics at Hyacinth-hall: consequently he was much disliked by them; and not only by them but by most of the country people in the neighbourhood, who imagined he had a strong predilection in favour of every thing that was English, and an undisguised contempt for all that was Irish. They, however, perceived that this prejudice against the Irish admitted of exceptions: the family of the Grays, Stafford acknowledged, were almost as orderly, punctual, industrious, and agreeable, as if they had been born in England. This was matter of so much surprise to him, that he could not forbear going at every leisure hour to the mill or the cottage of Rosanna, to convince himself that such things could actually be in Ireland. He bought all the flour for the hall at Rosanna-mill; and Rose supplied the housekeeper constantly with poultry; so that his master’s business continually obliged Stafford to repeat his visits; and every time he went to Gray’s cottage, he thought it more and more like an English farm-house, and imagined Rose every day looked more like an Englishwoman than any thing else. What a pity she was not born the other side of the water; for then his mother and friends, in Warwickshire, could never have made any objection to her. But, she being an Irishwoman, they would for certain never fancy her. He had oftentimes heard them as good as say, that it would break their hearts if he was to marry and settle amongst the bogs and the wild Irish.
This recollection of his friends’ prejudices at first deterred Stafford from thinking of marrying Rose; but it sometimes happens that reflection upon the prejudices of others shows us the folly of our own, and so it was in the present instance. Stafford wrote frequently to his friends in Warwickshire, to assure them that they had quite wrong notions of Ireland; that all Ireland was not a bog; that there were several well-grown trees in the parts he had visited; that there were some as pretty villages as you could wish to see any where, only that they called them towns; that the men, though some of them still wear brogues, were more hospitable to strangers than the English; and that the women, when not smoke-dried, were some of the handsomest he had seen, especially one Rose or Rosamond Gray, who was also the best and most agreeable girl he had ever known; though it was almost a sin to say so much of one who was not an Englishwoman born.
Much more in the same strain Stafford wrote to his mother; who, in reply to these letters, “besought him to consider well what he was about, before he suffered himself to begin falling desperately in love with this Rose or Rosamond Gray, or any Irishwoman whatsoever; who, having been bred in a mud-walled cabin, could never be expected to turn out at the long run equal to a true-born Englishwoman, bred in a slated house.”
Stafford’s notions had been so much enlarged by his travel, that he could not avoid smiling at some passages in his mother’s epistle; yet he so far agreed with her in opinion as to think it prudent not to begin falling desperately in love with any woman, whether Irish or English, till he was thoroughly acquainted with her temper and disposition. He therefore prudently forbore, that is to say, as much as he could forbear, to show any signs of his attachment to Rose, till he had full opportunity of forming a decisive judgment of her character.
This he had now in his power. He saw that his master was struck with the fair Rosamond’s charms; and he knew that Sir Hyacinth would pursue his purpose with no common perseverance. His heart beat with joy, when the card which brought her refusal arrived. He read it over and over again; and at last put it into his bosom, close to his heart. “Rose is a good daughter,” said he to himself; “and that is a sign that she will make a good wife. She is too innocent to see or suspect that master has taken a fancy to her, but she is right to do as her prudent, affectionate father advises. I never loved that farmer Gray so well, in all my whole life, as at this instant.”