CHAPTER VII. HOW TO MEET A SCANDAL
When the Government of the day had found that all their efforts to induce the Chief Baron to retire from the Bench were failures,—when they saw him firmly decided to accept nothing less than that price which they would not pay,—with a littleness which, it is but fair to own, took its origin from Mr. Cholmondely Balfour, they determined to pass upon him a slight which he could not but feel most painfully.
It happened in this wise. At the time I speak of Ireland was suffering from one of those spasmodic attacks of rebellion which every now and then occur through the chronic disaffection of the country, just as certain eruptions are thrown out over the body to relieve, as is supposed, some feverish tendencies of the system.
Now, although the native thinks no more of these passing troubles than would an old Indian of an attack of the “prickly heat,” to the English mind they always suggest danger, tend to increase the military force of the kingdom, and bring on in Parliament one of those Irish debates—a political sham fight—where, though there is a good deal of smoke, bustle, and confusion, nobody is hurt, nor, if the truth be told, is any one the better when it is over.
Through such a paroxysm was Ireland now passing. It matters little to our purpose to give it a specific name, for the Whiteboy or the Rockite, the Terry-alt, the Ribbonman, or the Fenian are the same; there being only one character in this dreary drama, however acute Viceroys and energetic secretaries may affect to think they are “assisting” at the representation of a perfectly new piece, with new scenery, dresses, and decorations.
In ordinary disturbances in Ireland, whenever they rose above the dignity of local mischief, the assistance and sympathy of France was always used as a sort of menace to England. It was a threat very certain to irritate, if it did no more. As, however, by course of time, we grew to form closer relations with France,—to believe, or affect to believe,—I am not very sure which,—that we had outlived old grudges, and had become rather ashamed of old rivalries, France could not be employed as the bugbear it had once been. Fortunately for Irish rebellion, America was quite prepared to take the vacant post, and with this immense additional gain, that the use of our own language enabled our disaffected in the States to revile us with a freedom and a vigor which, if there be that benefit which is said to exist in “seeing ourselves as others see us,” ought unquestionably to redound to our future good.
The present movement had gone so far as to fill the public mind with terror, and our jails with suspected traitors. To try these men a special commission had been named by the Government, from which, contrary to custom, the Chief Baron had been omitted. Nor was this all. The various newspapers supposed to be organs, or at least advocates, of the Ministry, kept up a continuous stream of comment on the grave injury to a country, at a crisis like that then present, to have one of its chief judicial seats occupied by one whose age and infirmities totally disabled him from rendering those services which the Crown and the nation alike had a right to expect from him.
Stories, for the most part untrue, of the Chief Baron's mistakes on the Bench appeared daily. Imaginary suitors, angry solicitors, and such-like—the Bar was too dignified to join in the cry—wrote letters averring this, that, or the other cruel wrong inflicted upon them through the “senile incapacity of this obstructive and vain old man.”
Never was there a less adroit tactic. Every insult they hurled at him only suggested a fresh resolve to hold his ground. To attack such a man was to evoke every spark of vigorous resistance in his nature, to stimulate energies which nothing short of outrage could awaken, and to call into activity powers which, in the ordinary course of events, would have fallen into decline and decay. As he expressed it, “in trying to extinguish the lamp they have only trimmed the wick.” When, through Sewell's pernicious counsels, the old Judge determined to convince the world of his judicial fitness by coming out a young man, dressed in the latest fashion, and affecting in his gait and manner the last fopperies of the day, all the reserve which respect for his great abilities had imposed was thrown aside, and the papers now assailed him with a ridicule that was downright indecent. The print shops, too, took up the theme, and the windows were filled with caricatures of every imaginable degree of absurdity.
There was one man to whom these offensive attacks gave pain only inferior to what they inflicted on the Chief himself,—this was his friend Haire. To have lived to see the great object of all his homage thus treated by an ungrateful country, seemed to him the direst of all calamities. Over and over did he ponder with himself whether such depravity of public feeling portended the coming decline of the nation, and whether such gross forgetfulness of great services was not to be taken as a sign of approaching dissolution.
It was true that since the Sewells had taken up their residence at the Priory he had seen but little of his distinguished friend. All the habits, the hours, and the associations of the house had been changed. The old butler, who used to receive Haire when he arrived on terms of humble friendship, telling him in confidence, before he went in, the temper in which he should find the Judge, what crosses or worries had recently befallen him, and what themes it might be discreet to avoid,—he was pensioned off, and in his place a smart Englishman, Mr. Cheetor, now figured,—a gentleman whose every accent, not to speak of his dress, would have awed poor Haire into downright subjection. The large back hall, through which you passed into the garden,—a favorite stroll of Haire's in olden times,—was now a billiard room, and generally filled with fine ladies and gentlemen engaged in playing; the very sight of a lady with a billiard cue, and not impossibly a cigarette, being shocks to the old man's notions only short of seeing the fair delinquent led off to the watchhouse. The drowsy quietude of the place, so grateful after the crush and tumult of a city, was gone; and there was the clang of a pianoforte, the rattle of the billiard balls, the loud talk and loud laughter of morning visitors, in its stead. The quaint old gray liveries were changed for coats of brilliant claret color. Even to the time-honored glass of brandy-and-water which welcomed Haire as he walked out from town there was revolution; and the measure of the old man's discomfiture was complete as the silvery-tongued butler offered him his choice of hock and seltzer or claret-cup!
“Does the Chief like all this? Is it possible that at his age these changes can please him?” muttered Haire, as he sauntered one day homeward, sad and dispirited; and it would not have been easy to resolve the question.
There was so much that flattered the old Judge's vanity,—so much that addressed itself to that consciousness that his years were no barrier to his sentiments, that into all that went on in life, whatever of new that men introduced into their ways or habits, he was just as capable of entering as the youngest amongst them; and this avidity to be behind in nothing showed itself in the way he would read the sporting papers, and make himself up in the odds at Newmarket and the last news of the Cambridge Eleven. It is true, never was there a more ready-money payment than the admiration he reaped from all this; and enthusiastic cornets went so far as to lament how the genius that might have done great things at Doncaster had been buried in a Court of Exchequer. “I wish he 'd tell us who 'll win the Riggles-worth”—“I 'd give a fifty to know what he thinks of Polly Perkins for the cup,” were the dropping utterances of mustachioed youths who would have turned away inattentive on any mention of his triumphs in the Senate or at the Bar.
“I declare, mother,” said Sewell, in one of those morning calls at Merrion Square in which he kept her alive to the events of the Priory,—“I declare, mother, if we could get you out of the way, I think he 'd marry again. He 's uncommonly tender towards one of those Lascelles girls, nieces of the Viceroy, and I am certain he would propose for her.”
“I'm sure I'm very sorry I should be an obstacle to him, especially as it prevents him from crowning the whole folly of his life.”
“She's a great horsewoman, and he has given me a commission to get him a saddle-horse to ride with her.”
“Which of course you will not.”
“Which of course I will, though. I'm going about it now. He has been very intractable about stable matters hitherto; the utmost we could do was to exchange the old long-tailed coach-horses, and get rid of that vile old chariot; but if we get him once launched into riding hacks, we 'll have something to mount us.”
“And when his granddaughter returns, will not all go back to the former state?”
“First of all, she's not coming. There's a split in that quarter, and in all likelihood an irremediable one.”
“How so? What has she done?”
“She has fallen in love with a young fellow as poor as herself; and her brother Tom has written to the Chief to know if he sees any reason why they should not marry. The very idea of an act of such insubordination as falling in love of course outraged him. He took my wife into his counsels besides, and she, it would appear, gave a most unfavorable character of the suitor,—said he was a gambler,—and we all know what a hopeless thing that is!—that his family had thrown him off; that he had gone through the whole of his patrimony, and was, in short, just as bad 'a lot' as could well be found.”
“She was quite right to say so,” burst in Lady Lendrick. “I really do not see how she could have done otherwise.”
“Perhaps not; the only possible objection was, that there was no truth in it all.”
“Not true!”
“Not a word of it, except what relates to his quarrel with his family. As for the rest, he is pretty much like other fellows of his age and time of life. He has done the sort of things they all do, and hitherto has come fairly enough out of them.”
“But what motive could she have had for blackening him?”
“Ask her, mother,” said he, with a grin of devilish spite-fulness,—“just ask her; and even if she won't tell you, your woman's wit will find out the reason without her aid.”
“I declare, Dudley, you are too bad,—too bad,” said she, coloring with anger as she spoke.
“I should say, Too good,—too good by half, mother; at least, if endurance be any virtue. The world is beautifully generous towards us husbands. We are either monsters of cruelty, or we come into that category the French call 'complaisant.' I can't say I have any fancy for either class; but if I am driven to a choice, I accept the part which meets the natural easiness of my disposition, the general kindliness of my character.”
For an instant Lady Lendrick's eyes flashed with a fiery indignation, and she seemed about to reply with anger; but with an effort she controlled her passion, and took a turn or two in the room without speaking. At last, having recovered her calm, she said, “Is the marriage project then broken off?”
“So far as the Chief is concerned, it is. He has written a furious letter to his granddaughter,—dwelt forcibly on the ingratitude of her conduct. There is nothing old people so constantly refer to ingratitude as young folks falling in love. It is strange what a close tie would seem to connect this sin of ingratitude with the tender passion. He has reminded her of all the good precepts and wise examples that were placed before her at the Priory, and how shamefully she would seem to have forgotten them. He asks her, Did she ever see him fall in love? Did she ever see any weakness of this kind in Mrs. Beales the housekeeper, or Joe the gardener?”
“What stuff and nonsense!” said Lady Lendrick, turning angrily away from him. “Sir William is not an angel, but as certainly he is not a fool.”
“There I differ from you altogether. He may be the craftiest lawyer, the wisest judge, the neatest scholar, and the best talker of his day,—these are all claims I cannot adjudicate on,—they are far and away above me. But I do pretend to know something about life and the world we live in, and I tell you that your all-accomplished Chief Baron is, in whatever relates to these, as consummate an ass as ever I met with. It is not that he is sometimes wrong; it is that he is never right.”
“I can imagine he is not very clever at billiards, and it is possible that there may be persons more conversant than he with the odds at Tattersall's,” said she, with a sneer.
“Not bad things to know something about, either of them,” said he, quietly; “but not exactly what I was alluding to. It is, however, somewhat amusing, mother, to see you come out as his defender. I assure you, honestly, when I counselled him on that new wig, and advised him to the choice of that dark velvet paletot, I never contemplated his making a conquest of you.”
“He has done some unwise things in life,” said she, with a fierce energy; “but I do not know if he has ever done so foolish a one as inviting you to come to live under his roof.”
“No, mother; the mistake was his not having done it earlier,—done it when he might have fallen in more readily with the wise changes I have introduced into his household, and when—most important element—he had a better balance at his banker's. You can't imagine what sums of money he has gone through.”
“I know nothing—I do not desire to know anything—of Sir William's money matters.”
Not heeding in the slightest degree the tone of reproof she spoke in, he went on, in the train of his own thoughts: “Yes! It would have made a considerable difference to each of us had we met somewhat earlier. It was a sort of backing I always wanted in life.”
“There was something else that you needed far more,” said she, with a sarcastic sternness.
“I know what you mean, mother,—I know what it is. Your politeness will not permit you to mention it. You would hint that I might not have been the worse of a little honesty,—is n't that it? I was certain of it. Well, do you know, mother, there's nothing in it,—positively nothing. I 've met fellows who have tried it,—clever fellows too, some of them,—and they have universally admitted it was as great a sham as the other thing. As St. John said, Honesty is a sort of balloon jib, that will bowl you along splendidly with fair weather; but when it comes on to blow, you'll soon find it better to shift your canvas and bend a very different sail. Now, men like myself are out in all kinds of weather; we want a handy rig and light tackle.”
“Is Lucy coming to luncheon?” said Lady Lendrick, most unmistakably showing how little palatable to her was his discourse.
“Not she. She's performing devoted mother up at the Priory, teaching Regy his catechism, or Cary her scales, or, what has an infinitely finer effect on the surrounders, dining with the children. Only dine with the children, and you may run a-muck through the Decalogue all the evening after.”
And with this profound piece of morality he adjusted his hat before the glass, trimmed his whiskers, gave himself a friendly nod, and walked away.
CHAPTER VIII. TWO MEN WELL MET
Sewell had long coveted the suite of rooms known at the Priory as “Miss Lucy's.” They were on the ground-floor; they opened on a small enclosed garden of their own; they had a delicious aspect; and it was a thousand pities they should be consigned to darkness and spiders while he wanted so much a snuggery of his own,—a little territory which could be approached without coming through the great entrance, and where he could receive his familiars, and a variety of other creatures whose externals alone would have denied them admittance to any decent household.
Now, although Sir William's letter to Lucy was the sort of document which, admitting no species of reply, usually closes a correspondence, Sewell had not courage to ask the Chief for the rooms in question. It would be too like peremptory action to be prudent. It might lead the old man to reconsider his judgment. Who knows what tender memories the thought might call up? Indeed, as Sewell himself remembered, he had seen fellows in India show great emotion at the sale of a comrade's kit, though they had read the news of his death with comparative composure. “If the old fellow were to toddle in here, and see her chair and her writing-table and her easel, it might undo everything,” said he; so that he wisely resolved it would be better to occupy the premises without a title than endeavor to obtain them legitimately.
By a slight effort of diplomacy with Mrs. Beales, he obtained possession of the key, and as speedily installed himself in occupancy. Indeed, when the venerable housekeeper came round to see what the Colonel could possibly want to do with the rooms, she scarcely recognized them. A pipe-rack covered one wall, furnished with every imaginable engine for smoke; a stand for rifles and fowling-pieces occupied a corner; some select prints of Derby winners and ballet celebrities were scattered about; while a small African monkey, of that color they call green, sat in a small arm-chair, of his own, near the window, apparently sunk in deep reflection. This creature, whom his master called Dundas—I am unable to say after what other representative of the name—was gifted with an instinctive appreciation of duns, and flew at the man who presented a bill as unerringly as ever a bull rushed at the bearer of a red rag.
How he learned to know tailors, shoemakers, and tobacconists, and distinguish them from the rest of mankind, and how he recognized them as natural enemies, I cannot say. As for Se well, he always spoke of the gift as the very strongest evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, and declared it was the prospective sense of troubles to come that suggested the instinct. The chalk head, the portrait Lucy had made of Sir Brook, still hung over the fireplace. It would be a curious subject of inquiry to know why Sewell suffered it still to hold its place there. If there was a man in the world whom he thoroughly hated, it was Fossbrooke. If there was one to injure whom he would have bartered fortune and benefit to himself, it was he. And how came it that he could bear to have this reminder of him so perpetually before his eyes?—that the stern features should be ever bent upon him,—darkly, reproachfully lowering, as he had often seen them in life? If it were simply that his tenure of the place was insecure, what so easy as to replace the picture, and why should he endure the insult of its presence there? No, there was some other reason,—some sentiment stronger than a reason,—some sense of danger in meddling with that man in any shape. Over and over again he vowed to himself he would hang it against a tree, and make a pistol-mark of it. Again and again he swore that he would destroy it; he even drew out his penknife to sever the head from the neck, significant sign of how he would like to treat the original; but yet he had replaced his knife, and repressed his resolve, and sat down again to brood over his anger inoperative.
To frown at the “old rascal,” as he loved to call him,—to menace him with his fist as he passed,—to scowl at him as he sat before the fire, were, after all, the limits of his wrath; but still the picture exerted a certain influence over him, and actually inspired a sense of fear as well as a sense of hatred.
Am I imposing too much on my reader's memory by asking him to recall a certain Mr. O'Reardon, in whose humble dwelling at Cullen's Wood Sir Brook Fossbrooke was at one time a lodger? Mr. O'Reardon, though an official of one of the law courts, and a patriot by profession, may not have made that amount of impression necessary to retain a place in the reader's recollection, nor indeed is it my desire to be exacting on this head. He is not the very best of company, and we shall not see much of him.
When Sewell succeeded to the office of Registrar, which the old Judge carried against the Castle with a high hand, he found Mr. O'Reardon there; he had just been promoted to the rank of keeper of the waiting-room. In the same quick glance with which the shrewd Colonel was wont to single out a horse, and knew the exact sort of quality he possessed, he read this man, and saw with rapid intelligence the stuff he was made of, and the sort of service he could render.
He called him into his office, and, closing the door, asked him a few questions about his former life. O'Reardon, long accustomed to regard the man who spoke with an English accent as an easy dupe, launched out on his devoted loyalty, the perils it had cost him, the hate to which his English attachment exposed him from his countrymen, and the little reward all his long-proved fidelity had ever won him; but Sewell cut him suddenly short with: “Don't try any of this sort of balderdash upon me, old fellow,—it's only lost time: I've been dealing with blackguards of your stamp all my life, and I read them like print.”
“Oh! your honor, them's hard words,—blackguard, blackguard! to a decent man that always had a good name and a good character.”
“What I want you to understand is this,” said Sewell, scanning him keenly while he spoke, “and to understand it well: that if you intend to serve me, and make yourself useful in whatever way I see fit to employ you, there must be no humbug about it. The first lesson you have to learn is, never to imagine you can take me in. As I have just told you, I have had my education amongst fellows more than your masters in craft,—so don't lose your time in trying to outrogue me.”
“Your honor's practical,—I always like to serve a gentleman that's practical,” said the fellow, with a totally changed voice.
“That will do,—speak that way,—drop your infernal whine,—turn out your patriotic sentiments to grass, and we'll get on comfortably.”
“Be gorra! that's practical,—practical, every word of it.”
“Now the first thing I want is to know who are the people who come here. I shall require to be able to distinguish those who are accustomed to frequent the office from strangers; I suppose you know the attorneys and solicitors, all of them?”
“Every man of them, sir; there's not a man in Dublin with a pair of black trousers that I could n't give you the history of.”
“That's practical, certainly,” said Sewell, adopting his phrase; and the other laughed pleasantly at the employment of it. “Whenever you have to announce persons that are strangers to you, and whose business you can't find out, mention that I am most busily engaged,—that persons of consequence are with me,—delay them, in short, and put them off for another day—”
“Till I can find out all about them?” broke in O'Reardon.
“Exactly.”
“And that's what I can do as well as any man in Ireland,” said the fellow, overjoyed at the thought of such congenial labor.
“I suppose you know a dun by the look of him?” asked Sewell, with a low, quiet laugh.
“Don't I, then?” was the reply.
“I 'll have none of them hanging about here,—mind that; you may tell them what you please, but take care that my orders are obeyed.”
“I will, sir.”
“I shall probably not come down every day to the office; it may chance that I may be absent a week at a time; but remember, I am always here,—you understand,—I am here, or I am at the Chief Baron's chambers,—somewhere, in short, about the Court.”
“Up in one of the arbitration rooms, maybe,” added O'Rear-don, to show he perfectly comprehended his instructions.
“But whether I come to the office or not, I shall expect you every morning at the Priory, to report to me whatever I ought to know,—who has called,—what rumors are afloat; and mind you tell everything as it reaches you. If you put on any embroidery of your own, I 'll detect it at once, and out you go, Master O'Reardon, notwithstanding all your long services and all your loyalty.”
“Practical, upon my conscience,—always practical,” said the fellow, with a grin of keen approval.
“One caution more; I'm a tolerably good friend to the man who serves me faithfully. When things go well, I reward liberally; but if a fellow doubles on me, if he plays me false, I 'll back myself to be the worst enemy he ever met with. That's practical, isn't it?”
“It is indeed, sir,—nothing more so.”
“I'll expect you to begin your visits on Thursday, then. Don't come to the hall-door, but pass round by the end of the house and into the little garden. I 'll leave the gate open, and you 'll find my room easily. It opens on the garden. Be with me by eleven.”
Colonel Sewell was not more than just to himself when he affirmed that he read men very quickly. As the practised cashier never hesitates about the genuineness of a note, but detects the forgery at a glance, this man had an instinctive appreciation of a scoundrel. Who knows if there be not some magnetic affinity between such natures, that saves them the process of thought and reason? He was right in the present case. O'Reardon was the very man he wanted. The fellow liked the life of a spy and an informer. To track, trace, connect this with that, and seek out the missing link which gave connection to the chain, had for him the fascination of a game, and until now his qualities had never been fairly appreciated. It was with pride too that he showed his patron that his gifts could be more widely exercised than within the narrow limits of an antechamber; for he brought him the name of the man who wrote in “The Starlight” the last abusive article on the Chief Baron, and had date and place for the visit of the same man to the under-secretary, Mr. Cholmondely Balfour. He gave him the latest news of the Curragh, and how Faunus had cut his frog in a training gallop, and that it was totally impossible he could be “placed” for his race. There were various delicate little scandals in the life of society too, which, however piquant to Sewell's ears, would have no interest for us; while of the sums lost at play, and the costly devices to raise the payments, even Sewell himself was amazed at the accuracy and extent of his information.
Mr. O'Reardon was one of a small knot of choice spirits who met every night and exchanged notes. Doubtless each had certain “reserves” which he kept strictly to himself; but otherwise they dealt very frankly and loyally with each other, well aware that it was only on such a foundation their system could be built; and the training-groom, and the butler, and the club-waiter, the office messenger, and the penny-postman became very active and potent agents in that strange drama we call life.
Now, though Mr. O'Reardon had presented himself each morning with due punctuality at the little garden, in which he was wont to make his report while Sewell smoked his morning cigar, for some days back the Colonel had not appeared. He had gone down to the country to a pigeon-match, from which he returned vexed and disappointed. He had shot badly, lost his money, lost his time, and lost his temper,—even to the extent of quarrelling with a young fellow whom he had long been speculating on “rooking,” and from whom he had now parted on terms that excluded further acquaintance.
Although it was a lovely morning, and the garden looking its very brightest and best,—the birds singing sweetly on the trees, and the air balmy with the jasmine and the sweet-brier,—Sewell strolled out upon the velvety sward in anything but a mood of kindred enjoyment. His bills were flying about on all sides, renewals upon renewals swelling up to formidable sums, for which he had not made any provision. Though his residence at the Priory, and his confident assurance to his creditors that the old Judge had made him his heir, obtained a certain credit for him, there were “small-minded scoundrels,” as he called them, who would n't wait for their fifty per cent. In his desperation to stave off the demands he could not satisfy, he had been driven to very ruinous expedients. He sold timber off the lawn without the old Judge's knowledge, and only hesitated about forging Sir William's name through the conviction that the document to which he would have to append it would itself suggest suspicion of the fraud. His increasing necessities had so far impaired his temper that men began to decline to play with him. Nobody was sure of him, and this cause augmented the difficulties of his position. Formerly his two or three hours at the club before dinner, or his evening at mess, were certain to keep him in current cash. He could hold out his handful of sovereigns, and offer to bet them in that reckless carelessness which, amongst very young men, is accepted as something akin to generosity. Now his supply was almost stopped, not to say that he found, what many have found, the rising generation endowed with an amount of acuteness that formerly none attained to without sore experiences and sharp lessons.
“Confound them,” he would say, “there are curs without fluff on their chins that know the odds at Newmarket as well as John Day! What chance has a man with youngsters that understand the 'call for trumps'?”
It was thus moralizing over a world in decline that he strolled through the garden, his unlit cigar held firm between his teeth, and his hands deep sunk in his trousers' pockets. As he turned an angle of a walk, he was arrested by a very silky voice saying, “Your honor's welcome home. I hope your honor's well, and enjoyed yourself when you were away.”
“Ah, O'Reardon, that you! pretty well, thank you; quite well, I believe; at least, as well as any man can be who is in want of money, and does not know where to find it.”
Mr. O'Reardon grinned, as if that, at least, was one of the contingencies his affluent chief could never have had any experience of. “Moses is to run after all, sir,” said he, after a pause; “the bandages was all a sham,—he never broke down.”
“So much the worse for me. I took the heavy odds against him on your fine information,” said Sewell, savagely.
“You 'll not be hurt this time. He 'll have a tongue as big as three on the day of the race; and there will be no putting a bridle on him.”
“I don't believe in that trick, O'Reardon.”
“I do, sir; and I'm laying the only ten-pound note I have on it,” said the other, calmly.
“What about Mary Draper? is she coughing still?”
“She is, sir, and won't feed besides; but Mr. Harman is in such trouble about his wife going off with Captain Peters, that he never thinks of the mare. Any one goes into the stable that likes.”
“Confounded fool he must be! He stood heavily on that mare. When did Lady Jane bolt?”
“On Tuesday night, sir. She was here at the Priory at luncheon with Captain Peters that morning. She and Mrs. Sewell were walking more than an hour together in the back garden.”
“Did you overhear anything they said?”
“Only once, sir, for they spoke low; but one time your Lady said aloud, 'If any one blames you, dear, it won't be me.' I think the other was crying when she said it.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Sewell, angrily.
“She's gone away, at all events, sir; and Mr. Harman 's out of his mind about it. Cross told me this morning that he would n't be surprised if his master cut his throat or went to live on the Continent.”
“Do you happen to know anybody would lend me a thousand pounds on no particular security, O'Reardon?”
“Not just at the minute,—perhaps if I had a day or two to think of it.”
“I could give you a week,—a fortnight if it was any use, but it is not; and you know it's not, Master O'Reardon, as well as any man breathing.”
There was a silence of some minutes now between them; and while Sewell brooded over his hard fortune, O'Reardon seemed to be reviewing in his mind the state of the share market, and taking a sweeping view of the course of the exchanges.
“Well, indeed, sir, money is tight,—mighty tight, at this time. Old M'Cabe of the lottery office wouldn't advance three hundred to Lord Arthur St. Aubin without the family plate, and I saw the covered dishes going in myself.”
“I wish I had family plate,” sighed Sewell.
“So you will yet, please God,” said the other, piously. “His Lordship can't live forever! But jewels is as good,” resumed he, after a slight pause.
“I have just as much of the one as the other, O'Reardon. They were a sort of scrip I never invested in.”
“It is n't a bad thing to do, after all. I remember poor Mr. Giles Morony saying one day, 'I dined yesterday, Tom,' says he, 'off one of my wife's ear-rings, and I never ate a better dinner in my life; and with the blessing of Providence I'll go drunk to bed off the other to-night.'”
“Was n't he hanged afterwards for a murder?”
“No, sir,—sentenced, but never hanged. Mr. Wallace got him off on a writ of error. He was a most agreeable man. Has Mrs. Sewell any trinkets of value, sir?”
“I believe not—I don't know—I don't care,” said he, angrily; for the subject, as an apropos, was scarcely pleasant. “Any one at the office since I left?” asked he, with a twang of irritation still in his tone.
“That ould man I tould your honor about called three times.”
“You told me nothing of any old man.”
“I wrote it twice to your honor since I saw you, and left the letters here myself.”
“You don't think I break open letters in such handwriting as yours, do you? Why, man, my table is covered with them. Who is the old man you speak of?”
“Well, sir, that's more than I know yet; but I 'll be well acquainted with all about him before a week ends, for I knew him before and he puzzled me too.”
“What's his business with me?”
“He would not tell. Indeed, he's not much given to talk. He just says, 'Is Colonel Sewell here?' and when I answer, 'No, sir,' he goes on, 'Can you tell the day or the hour when I may find him here?' Of course I say that your honor might come at any moment,—that your time is uncertain, and such-like,—that you 're greatly occupied with the Chief Baron.”
“What is he like? Is he a gentleman?”
“I think he is,—at least he was once; for though his clothes is not new and his boots are patched, there's a look about him that common people never have.”
“Is he short or tall? What is he like?” Just as Sewell had put this question they had gained the door of the little sitting-room, which lay wide open, admitting a full view of the interior. “Give me some notion of his appearance, if you can.”
“There he is, then,” cried O'Reardon, pointing to the chalk head over the chimney. “That's himself, and as like as life.”
“What? that!” exclaimed Sewell, clutching the man's arm, and actually shaking him in his eagerness. “Do you mean that he is the same man you see here?”
“I do indeed, sir. There's no mistaking him. His beard's a little longer than the picture, and he's thinner, perhaps; but that's the man.”
Sewell sat down on the chair nearest him, sick and faint; a cold clammy sweat broke over his face and temples, and he felt the horrible nausea of intense weakness. “Tell me,” said he at last, with a great effort to seem calm, “just the words he said, as nearly as you can recall them.”
“It was what I told your honor. 'Is Colonel Sewell here? Is there no means of knowing when he may be found here?' And then when I'd say, 'What name am I to give? who is it I 'm to say called?' his answer would be, 'That is no concern of yours. It is for me to leave my name or not, as it pleases me.' I was going to remind him that he once lodged in my house at Cullen's Wood, but I thought better of it, and said nothing.”
“Did he speak of calling again?”
“No, but he came yesterday; and whether he thought I was denying your honor or not I don't know, but he sat down in the waiting-room and smoked a cigar there, and heard two or three come in and ask for you and get the same answer.”
Sewell groaned heavily, and covered his face with his hands.
“I think,” said O'Reardon, with a half-hesitating, timid manner, as though it was a case where any blunder would be very awkward, “that if it was how that this man was any trouble,—I mean any sort of an inconvenience to your honor,—and that it was displeasing to your honor to have any dealings with him, I think I could find a way to make him cut his stick and leave the country; or if he would n't do that, come to worse luck here.”
“What do you mean,—have you anything against him?” cried Sewell, with a wild eagerness.
“If I 'm not much mistaken, I can soon have against him as much as his life 's worth.”
“If you could,” said Sewell, clutching both his arms, and staring him fixedly in the face,—“if you could! I mean, if you could rid me of him, now and forever,—I don't care how, and I 'll not ask how,—only do it; and I 'll swear to you there 's nothing in my power to serve you I 'll refuse doing,—nothing!”
“What 's between your honor and him?” said O'Reardon, with an assurance that his present power suggested.
“How dare you ask me, sir? Do you imagine that when I take such a fellow as you into my service, I make him my confidant and my friend?”
“That's true, sir,” said the other, whose face only grew paler under this insult, while his manner regained all its former subserviency,—“that's true, sir. My interest about your honor made me forget myself; and I was thinking how I could be most use to you. But, as your honor says, it's no business of mine at all.”
“None whatever,” said Sewell, sternly; for a sudden suspicion had crossed him of what such a fellow as this might become if once intrusted with the power of a secret.
“Then it's better, your honor,” said he, with a slavish whine, “that I 'd keep to what I 'm fit for,—sweeping out the office, and taking the messages, and the like, and not try things that 's above me.”
“You 'll just do whatever my service requires, and whenever I find that you do it ill, do it unfaithfully, or even unwillingly, we part company, Master O'Reardon. Is that intelligible?”
“Then, sir, the sooner you fill up my place the better. I 'll give notice now, and your honor has fifteen days to get one that will suit him better.”
Sewell turned on him a look of savage hatred. He read, through all the assumed humility of the fellow's manner, the determined insolence of his stand.
“Go now, and go to the devil, if you like, so that I never see your hang-dog face again; that 's all I bargain for.”
“Good-morning, sir; there's the key of the office, and that's the key of the small safe; Mr. Simmes has the other. There 's a little account I have,—it's only a few shillings is coming to me. I 'll leave it here to-morrow; and if your honor would like me to tell the new man about the people that come after your honor—who 's to be let in and who 's not—”
Sewell made a haughty gesture with his arm as though to say that he need not trouble himself on that head.
“Here's them cigars your honor gave me last week. I suppose I ought to hand them back, now that I 'm discharged and turned away.”
“You have discharged yourself, my good friend. With a civil tongue in your head, and ordinary prudence, you might have held on to your place till it was time to pension you out of it.”
“Then I crave your honor's pardon, and you 'll never have to find the same fault with me again. It was just breaking my heart, it was,—the thought of leaving your honor.”
“That's enough about it; go back to your duty. Mind your business; and take good care you never meddle with mine.”
“Has your honor any orders?” said O'Reardon, with his ordinary tone of respectful attention.
“Find out if Hughes is well enough to ride; they tell me he was worse yesterday. Don't bother me any more about that fellow that writes the attacks on the Chief Baron. They do the thing better now in the English papers, and ask nothing for it. Look out for some one who will advance me a little money,—even a couple of hundreds; and above all, track the old fellow who called at the office; find out what he 's in Ireland for, and how long he stays. I intend to go to the country this evening, so that you 'll have to write your report,—the post-town is Killaloe.”
“And if the ould man presses me hard,” said O'Reardon, with one eye knowingly closed, “your honor's gone over to England, and won't be back till the cock-shooting.”
Sewell nodded, and with a gesture dismissed the fellow, half ashamed at the familiarity that not only seemed to read his thoughts, but to follow them out to their conclusions.
CHAPTER IX. A SURPRISE
In a little cabin standing on the extreme point of the promontory of Howth, which its fisherman owner usually let to lodgers in the bathing-season, Sir Brook Fossbrooke had taken up his abode. The view was glorious from the window where he generally sat, and took in the whole sweep of the bay, from Killiney, with the background of the Wicklow mountains, to the very cliffs at his feet; and when the weather was favorable,—an event, I grieve to say, not of every-day occurrence,—leading him often to doubt whether in its graceful outline and varied color he did not prefer it to Cagliari, with its waving orange groves and vine-clad slopes.
He made a little water-color drawing to enclose in a letter to Lucy; and now, as he sat gazing on the scene, he saw some effect of light on the landscape which made him half disposed to destroy his sketch and begin another.
“Tell your sister, Tom,” wrote he, “that if my letter to her goes without the picture I promised her, it is because the sun has just got behind a sort of tattered broken cloud, and is streaming down long slips of light over the Wicklow hills and the woods at their feet, which are driving me crazy with envy; but if I look on it any longer, I shall only lose another post, so now to my task.
“Although I remained a day in the neighborhood, I was not received at Holt. Sir Hugh was ill, and most probably never heard of my vicinity. Lady Trafford sent me a polite—a very polite—note of regrets, &c., for not being able to ask me to the house, which she called a veritable hospital, the younger son having just returned from Madeira dangerously ill. She expressed a hope, more courteous possibly than sincere, that my stay in England would allow my returning and passing some days there, to which I sent a civil answer and went my way. The young fellow, I hear, cannot recover, so that Lionel will be the heir after all; that is, if Sir Hugh's temper should not carry him to the extent of disinheriting his son for a stranger. I was spared my trip to Cornwall; spared it by meeting in London with a knot of mining-people, 'Craig, Pears, and Denk,' who examined our ore, and pronounced it the finest ever brought to England. As the material for the white-lead of commerce, they say it is unrivalled; and when I told them that our supply might be called inexhaustible, they began to regard me as a sort of Croesus. I dined with them at a City club, called, I think, the Gresham, a very grand entertainment,—turtle and blackcock in abundance, and a deal of talk,—very bumptious talk of all the money we were all going to make, and how our shares, for we are to be a company, must run up within a week to eight or ten premium. They are, I doubt not, very honest fine fellows, but they are vulgar dogs, Tom, I may say it to you in confidence, and use freedoms with each other in intercourse that are scarcely pleasing. To myself personally there was no lack of courtesy, nor can I complain that there was any forgetful-ness of due respect. I could not accept their invitation to a second dinner at Greenwich, but deferred it till my return from Ireland.
“I came on here on Wednesday last, and if you ask me what I have done, my answer is, Nothing—absolutely nothing. I have been four several times at the office where Sewell presides, but always to meet the same reply, 'Not in town to-day;' and now I learn that he is hunting somewhere in Cheshire. I am averse to going after him to the Chief Baron's house, where he resides, and am yet uncertain how to act. It is just possible he may have learned that I am in Ireland, and is keeping out of my way, though I have neglected no precaution of secrecy, have taken a humble lodging some miles from town, and have my letters addressed to the post-office to be called for. Up to this I have not met one who knows me. The Viceroy is away in England, and in broken health,—indeed, so ill that his return to Ireland is more than doubtful; and Balfour, who might have recognized me, is happily so much occupied with the 'Celts,' as the latest rebels call themselves, that he has no time to go much abroad.
“The papers which I have sent you regularly since my arrival will inform you about this absurd movement. You will also see the debate on your grandfather. He will not retire, do all that they may; and now, as a measure of insult, they have named a special commission and omitted his name.
“They went so far as to accuse him of senile weakness and incapacity; but the letter which has been published with his name is one of the most terrific pieces of invective I ever read: I will try and get a copy to send you.
“I am anxious to call and see Beattie; but until I have met Sewell, and got this troublesome task off my mind, I have no heart for anything. From chance travellers in the train, as I go up to town, I hear that the Chief Baron is living at a most expensive rate,—large dinners every week, and costly morning parties, of a style Dublin has not seen before. They say, too, that he dresses now like a man of five-and-thirty, rides a blood horse, and is seen joining in all the festivities of the capital. Of myself, of course, I can confirm none of these stories. There comes the rain again. It is now dashing like hail against the windows; and of the beautiful bay and the rocky islands, the leafy shore and the indented coast-line I can see nothing,—nothing but the dense downpour that, thickening at every moment, shuts out all view, so that even the spars of the little pinnace in the bay beneath are now lost to me. A few minutes ago I was ready to declare that Europe had nothing to compare with this island, and now I 'd rather take rocky Ischia, with its scraggy cliffs, sunlit and scorching, than live here watery and bloated like a slug on a garden-wall. Perhaps my temper is not improved by the reflection that I 'll have to walk to the post, about two miles off, with this letter, and then come back to my own sad company for the rest of the evening.
“I had half a mind to run down and look at the 'Nest,' but I am told I should not know it again, it has been so changed in every way. I have spared myself, therefore, the pain the sight would have given me, and kept my memory of it as I saw it on my first visit, when Lucy met me at the door. Tell her from me, that when—”
The letter broke off here, and was continued lower down the page in a more hurried hand, thus:—
“In their ardor to suppress the insurrection here, some one has denounced me; and my pistols and my packet of lead, and my bullet-mould, have so far confirmed suspicion against me, that I am to go forthwith before a magistrate. It is so far provoking that my name will probably figure in the newspapers, and I have no fancy to furnish a laugh to the town on such grounds. The chief of the party (there are three of them, and evidently came prepared to expect resistance) is very polite, and permits me to add these few lines to explain my abrupt conclusion. Tell Lucy I shall keep back my letter to her, and finish it to-morrow. I do not know well whether to laugh or be angry at this incident. If a mere mistake, it is of course absurd, but the warrant seems correct in every respect. The officer assures me that any respectable bail will be at once accepted by the magistrate; and I have not the courage to tell him that I do not possess a single friend or acquaintance in this city whom I could ask to be my surety.
“After all, I take it, the best way is to laugh at the incident. It was only last night, as I walked home here in the dark, I was thinking I had grown too old for adventures, and here comes one—at least it may prove so—to contradict me.
“The car to convey me to town has arrived; and with loves to dear Lu and yourself, I am, as ever, yours,
“Bk. Fossbrooke.
“It is a great relief to me—it will be also to you—to learn that the magistrate can, if he please, examine me in private.”