‘What’s the meaning of this? What mystery’s here? A droll kind o’ message, and a droll kind o’ place for an appointment, and a droll hour o’ the night for a respectable man to be gadding about a kirkyard. Weel, weel! Maybe it’s one of Moya’s kin anxious to hear news aboot the bairn. Be she friend or foe, angel or deil, I’ll be there.’
CHAPTER IV.—A SURPRISE FOR DESMOND.
Mr. Richard Conseltine, junior, was not a young man of brilliant parts, but, like most intellectually slow people, he made up for the paucity of his ideas by the intensity with which he dwelt on those he possessed. He had made up his mind quite easily and naturally that his uncle’s belongings should come to him in their entirety along with the title. He had grown to early manhood in the unquestioning belief that such would be the case.
But now, to his amazement, he had learned of the real relationship existing between his uncle and the Squireen. Up to that moment, Mr. Conseltine had thought it well to keep the knowledge from his son.
The two boys had hated each other, almost at first sight, with a quiet instinctive ferocity as of cat and dog. In his sullen grudging fashion Richard detested all who were not subservient to his wishes and interests, and especially hated anybody who was his superior in matters in which he most desired to excel. Desmond, as bright and quick as he himself was lumpish and dull, compared with him to his disadvantage at every turn. The poor Squireen, who owned not a single acre of soil, and was dependent upon Richard’s uncle for his daily bread, for the clothes he wore, was the idol of the district. Mr. Richard Conseltine, the independent young gentleman of birth and means, was everywhere tacitly, and not unfrequently overtly, set at naught. In those exercises which are popular in all rural districts, and especially among the sport-loving people of Ireland, Desmond was easily Richard’s master. He was the best shot, rider, angler, boxer, dancer, and fly-fisherman of his years in the county. He was handsome in person, and had with all women, young or old, that serene and beautiful assurance which of all masculine qualities recommends itself most instantly to the feminine heart.
All women loved him, and did their best to spoil him. Every man and boy on the estate was his willing servant and accomplice in the freaks and frolics and breaches of discipline in which he delighted, confident that the simple excuse, ‘’Twas the Squireen that asked me,’ would be quite sufficient to calm the wrath of my lord or his agent, or even of the dreaded Mr. Peebles, before whom, it was popularly believed, even his lordship trembled.
Richard could not but contrast this willing and eager service with the frigid obedience which was paid to him as the future owner of the soil. Had he been other than he was, he might have found a lesson in the contrast, and have penetrated the simple secret of Desmond’s popularity, which lay more in his sunny good-temper, his quick sympathy, his courage and generosity, than in the physical superiorities which so galled his cousin’s envious mind.
Ideas, it has been said, were not common with Richard, but the evening of the events just recorded was made additionally memorable to him by the implanting of a new one in his mind. He had happened to pass on the terrace below the open window of the drawing-room during the conversation held between Lord Kilpatrick and the faithful Peebles. The window was open, and the calm evening air had brought one single utterance of the old servant’s distinctly to his ears.