Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 28

"By all that's princely," cried he, "then, that young Harry Ormond was intended for a prince, he sits ahorse so like myself; and that horse requires a master hand to manage him."

Ormond alighted.

The gracious, cordial, fatherly welcome, with which he was received, delighted his heart.

"Welcome, prince, my adopted son, welcome to Corny _castle--palace_, I would have said, only for the const.i.tuted authorities of the post-office, that might take exceptions, and not be sending me my letters right. As I am neither bishop nor arch, I have, in their blind eyes or conceptions, no right--Lord help them!--to a temporal palace.

Be that as it may, come you in with me, here into the big room--and see! there's the bed in the corner for your first object, my boy--your wounded chap; and I'll visit his wound, and fix it and him the first thing for ye, the minute he comes up."

His majesty pointed to a bed in the corner of a large apartment, whose beautiful painted ceiling and cornice, and fine chimney-piece with caryatides of white marble, ill accorded with the heaps of oats and corn, the thras.h.i.+ng cloth and flail, which lay on the floor.

"It is intended for a drawing-room, understand," said King Corny; "but till it is finished, I use it for a granary or a barn, when it would not be a barrack-room or hospital, which last is most useful at present."

To this hospital Moriarty was carefully conveyed. Here, notwithstanding his gout, which affected only his feet, King Corny dressed Moriarty's wound with exquisite tenderness and skill; for he had actually acquired knowledge and address in many arts, with which none could have suspected him to have been in the least acquainted.

Dinner was soon announced, which was served up with such a strange mixture of profusion and carelessness, as showed that the attendants, who were numerous and ill-caparisoned, were not much used to gala-days.

The crowd, who had accompanied Moriarty into the house, were admitted into the dining-room, where they stood round the king, prince, and Father Jos the priest, as the courtiers, during the king's supper at Versailles, surrounded the King of France. But these poor people were treated with more hospitality than were the courtiers of the French king; for as soon as the dishes were removed, their contents were generously distributed among the attendant mult.i.tude. The people blest both king and prince, "wis.h.i.+ng them health and happiness long to _reign_ over them;" and bowing suitably to his majesty the king, and to his reverence the priest, without standing upon the order of their going, departed.

"And now, Father Jos," said the king to the priest, "say grace, and draw close, and let me see you do justice to my claret, or the whiskey punch if you prefer; and you, Prince Harry, we will set to it regally as long as you please."

"Till tea-time," thought young Harry. "Till supper-time," thought Father Jos. "Till bed-time," thought King Corny.

At tea-time young Harry, in pursuance of his _resolution_ the first, rose, but he was seized instantly, and held down to his chair. The royal command was laid upon him "to sit still and be a good fellow." Moreover the door was locked--so that there was no escape or retreat.

The next morning when he wakened with an aching head, he recollected with disgust the figure of Father Jos, and all the noisy mirth of the preceding night. Not without some self-contempt, he asked himself what had become of his resolution.

"The wounded boy was axing for you, Master Harry," said the girl, who came in to open the shutters.

"How is he?" cried Harry, starting up.

"He is _but soberly_; [Footnote: But soberly--not very well, or in good spirits.] he got the night but middling; he concaits he could not sleep becaase he did not get a sight of your honour afore he'd settle--I tell him 'tis the change of beds, which always hinders a body to sleep the first night."

The sense of having totally forgotten the poor fellow--the contrast between this forgetfulness and the anxiety and contrition of the two preceding nights, actually surprised Ormond: he could hardly believe that he was one and the same person. Then came excuses to himself: "Grat.i.tude--common civility--the peremptoriness of King Corny--his pa.s.sionate temper, when opposed on this tender point--the locked door--and two to one: in short, there was an impossibility in the circ.u.mstances of doing otherwise than what he had done. But then the same impossibility--the same circ.u.mstances--might recur the next night, and the next, and so on: the peremptory temper of King Corny was not likely to alter, and the moral obligation of grat.i.tude would continue the same; so that at nineteen was he to become, from complaisance, what his soul and body abhorred--an habitual drunkard? And what would become of Lady Annaly's interest in his fate or his improvement?"

The two questions were not of equal importance, but our hero was at this time far from having any just proportion in his reasoning: it was well he reasoned at all. The argument as to the obligation of grat.i.tude--the view he had taken of the never-ending nature of the evil, which must be the consequence of beginning with weak complaisance--above all, the _feeling_ that he had so lost his reason as not only to forget Moriarty, but to have been again incapable of commanding his pa.s.sions, if any thing had occurred to cross his temper, determined Ormond to make a firm resistance on the next occasion that should occur: it did occur the very next night. After a dinner given to his chief tenants and the _genteel_ people of the islands--a dinner in honour and in introduction of his _adopted son_, King Corny gave a toast "to the Prince presumptive,"

as he now styled him--a b.u.mper toast. Soon afterwards he detected _daylight_ in Harry's gla.s.s, and cursing it properly, he insisted on flowing bowls and full gla.s.ses. "What! are you Prince _presumptuous_?"

cried he, with a half angry and astonished look. "Would you resist and contradict your father and king at his own table after dinner? Down with the gla.s.s!"

Farther and steady resistance changed the jesting tone and half angry look of King Corny into sullen silence, and a black portentous brow of serious displeasure. After a decent time of sitting, the bottle pa.s.sing him without farther importunity, Ormond rose--it was a hard struggle; for in the face of his benefactor he saw reproach and rage bursting from every feature: still he moved on towards the door. He heard the words "sneaking off sober!--let him sneak!"

Ormond had his hand on the lock of the door--it was a bad lock, and opened with difficulty.

"There's grat.i.tude for you! No heart, after all--I mistook him."

Ormond turned back, and firmly standing and firmly speaking, he said, "You did not mistake me formerly, sir; but you mistake me now!--Sneaking!--Is there any man here, sober or drunk," continued be, impetuously approaching the table, and looking round full in every face,--"is there any man here dares to say so but yourself?--You, _you_, my benefactor, my friend; you have said it--think it you did not--you could not, but say it you may--_You_ may say what you will to Harry Ormond, bound to you as he is--bound hand and foot and heart I--Trample on him as you will--_you_ may. _No heart_! Oblige me, gentlemen, some of you," cried he, his anger rising and his eyes kindling as he spoke, "some of you gentlemen, if any of you think so, oblige me by saying so.

No grat.i.tude, sir!" turning from them, and addressing himself to the old man, who held an untasted gla.s.s of claret as he listened--"No grat.i.tude!

Have not I?--Try me, try me to the death--you have tried me to the quick of the heart, and I have borne it."

He could bear it no longer: he threw himself into the vacant chair, flung out his arms on the table, and laying his face down upon them, wept aloud. Cornelius O'Shane pushed the wine away. "I've wronged the boy grievously," said he; and forgetting the gout, he rose from his chair, hobbled to him, and leaning over him, "Harry, 'tis I--look up, my own boy, and say you forgive me, or I'll never forgive myself. That's well," continued he, as Harry looked up and gave him his hand; "that's well!--you've taken the twinge out of my heart worse than the gout: not a drop of gall or malice in your nature, nor ever was, more than in the child unborn. But see, I'll tell you what you'll do now, Harry, to settle all things--and lest the fit should take me ever to be mad with you on this score again. You don't choose to drink more than's becoming?--Well, you'se right, and I'm wrong. 'Twould be a burning shame of me to make of you what I have made of myself. We must do only as well as we can. But I will ensure you against the future; and before we take another gla.s.s--there's the priest--and you, Tom Ferrally there, step you for my swearing book. Harry Ormond, you shall take an oath against drinking more gla.s.ses than you please evermore, and then you're safe from me. But stay--you are a heretic. Phoo! what am I saying? 'twas seeing the priest put that word _heretic_ in my head--you're not a catholic, I mean. But an oath's an oath, taken before priest or parson--an oath, taken how you will, will operate. But stay, to make all easy, 'tis I'll take it."

"Against drinking, you! King Corny!" said Father Jos, stopping his hand, "and in case of the gout in your stomach?"

"Against drinking! do you think I'd perjure myself? No! But against pressing _him_ to it--I'll take my oath I'll never ask him to drink another gla.s.s more than he likes."

The oath was taken, and King Corny concluded the ceremony by observing that, after all, there was no character he despised more than that of a sot. But every gentleman knew that there was a wide and material difference betwixt a gentleman who was fond of his bottle, and that unfortunate being, an habitual drunkard. For his own part, it was his established rule never to go to bed without a proper quant.i.ty of liquor under his belt; but he defied the universe to say he was ever known to be drunk.

At a court where such ingenious casuistry prevailed, it was happy for our hero that an unqualifying oath now protected his resolution.

CHAPTER V.

In the middle of the night our hero was wakened by a loud bellowing. It was only King Corny in a paroxysm of the gout. His majesty was naturally of a very impatient temper, and his maxims of philosophy encouraged him to the most unrestrained expression of his feelings--the maxims of his philosophy--for he had read, though in most desultory manner, and he had thought often deeply, and not seldom justly. The turns of his mind, and the questions he asked, were sometimes utterly unexpected. "Pray, now,"

said he to Harry, who stood beside his bed, "now that I've a moment's ease--did you ever hear of the Stoics that the bookmen talk of? and can you tell me what good any one of them ever got by making it a point to make no noise, when they'd be _punished_ and racked with pains of body or mind? Why, I will tell you all they got--all they got was no pity: who would give them pity that did not require it? I could bleed to death in a bath, as well as the best of them, if I chose it; or chew a bullet if I set my teeth to it, with any man in a regiment--but where's the use? nature knows best, and she says _roar_!" And he roared--for another twinge seized him.

Nature said _sleep_! several times this night to Harry, and to every body in the palace; but they did not sleep, they could not, while the roaring continued: so all had reason to rejoice, and Moriarty in particular, when his majesty's paroxysm was past. Harry was in a sound sleep at twelve o'clock the next day, when he was summoned into the royal presence. He found King Corny sitting at ease in his bed, and that bed strewed over with a variety of roots and leaves, weeds and plants.

An old woman was hovering over the fire, stirring something in a black kettle. "Simples these--of wonderful unknown power," said King Corny to Harry, as he approached the bed; "and I'll engage you don't know the name even of the half of them."

Harry confessed his ignorance.

"No shame for you--was you as wise as King Solomon himself, you might not know them, for he did not, nor couldn't, he that had never set his foot a grousing on an Irish bog. Sheelah, come you over, and say what's this?"

The old woman now came to a.s.sist at this bed of botany, and with spectacles slipping off, and pushed on her nose continually, peered over each green thing, and named in Irish "every herb that sips the dew."

Sheelah was deeper in Irish lore than King Corny could pretend to be: but then he humbled her with the "black h.e.l.lebore of the ancients," and he had, in an unaccountable manner, affected her imagination by talking of "that famous howl of narcotic poisons, which that great man Socrates drank off." Sheelah would interrupt herself in the middle of a sentence, and curtsy if she heard him p.r.o.nounce the name of Socrates--and at the mention of the bowl, she would regularly sigh, and exclaim, "Lord save us!--But that was a wicked bowl."

Then after a cast of her eyes up to heaven, and crossing herself on the forehead, she would take up her discourse at the word where she had left off.

King Corny set to work compounding plasters and embrocations, preparing all sorts of decoctions of roots and leaves, famous _through the country_. And while he directed and gesticulated from his bed, the old woman worked over the fire in obedience to his commands; sometimes, however, not with that "prompt and mute obedience," which the great require.

It was fortunate for Moriarty that King Corny, not having the use of his nether limbs, could not attend even in his gouty chair to administer the medicines he had made, and to see them fairly swallowed. Sheelah, whose conscience was easy on this point, contented herself with giving him a strict charge to "take every bottle to the last drop." All she insisted upon for her own part was, that she must tie the charm round his neck and arm. She would fain have removed the dressings of the wound to subst.i.tute plasters of her own, over which she had p.r.o.nounced certain prayers or incantations; but Moriarty, who had seized and held fast one good principle of surgery, that the air must never be let into the wound, held mainly to this maxim, and all Sheelah could obtain was permission to clap on her charmed plaster over the dressing.

In due time, or, as King Corny triumphantly observed, in "a wonderful short period," Moriarty got quite well, long before the king's gout was cured, even with the a.s.sistance of the black h.e.l.lebore of the ancients.

King Corny was so well pleased with his patient for doing such credit to his medical skill, that he gave him and his family a cabin, and spot of land, in the islands--a cabin near the palace; and at Harry's request made him his wood-ranger and his gamekeeper--the one a lucrative place, the other a sinecure.

Master Harry--Prince Harry--was now looked up to as a person all-powerful with _the master_; and pet.i.tions and requests to speak for them, to speak just one word, came pouring from all sides: but however enviable his situation as favourite and prince presumptive might appear to others, it was not in all respects comfortable to himself.

Formerly, when a boy, in his visits to the Black Islands, he used to have a little companion of whom he was fond--Dora--Corny's daughter.

Missing her much, he inquired from her father where she was gone, and when she was likely to return.

"She is gone off to the _continent_--to the continent of Ireland, that is; but not banished for any misdemeanour. You know," said King Corny, "'tis generally considered as a punishment in the Black Islands to be banished to Ireland. A threat of that kind, I find sufficient to bring the most refractory and ill-disposed of my subjects, if I had any of that description, to rason in the last resort; but to that ultimate law I have not recourse, except in extreme cases; I understand my business of king too well, to wear out either shame or fear; but you are no legislator yet, Prince Harry. So what was you asking me about Dora? She is only gone a trip to the continent, to her aunt's, by the mother's side, Miss O'Faley, that you never saw, to get the advantage of a dancing-master, which myself don't think she wants--a natural carriage, with native graces, being, in my unsophisticated opinion, worth all the dancing-master's positions, contortions, or drillings; but her aunt's of a contrary opinion, and the women say it is essential. So let 'em put Dora in the stocks, and punish her as they will, she'll be the gladder to get free, and fly back from their continent to her own Black Islands, and to you and me--that is, to me--I ax your pardon, Harry Ormond; for you know, or I should tell you in time, she is engaged already to White Connal, of Glynn--from her birth. That engagement I made with the father over a bowl of punch--I promised--I'm afraid it was a foolish business--I promised if ever he, Old Connal, should have a son, and I should have a daughter, his son should marry my daughter. I promised, I say--I took my oath: and then Mrs. Connal that was, had, shortly after, not one son, but two--and twins they were: and I had--unluckily--ten years after, the daughter, which is Dora--and then as she could not marry both, the one twin was to be fixed on for her, and that was him they call White Connal--so there it was. Well, it was altogether a rash act! So you'll consider her as a married woman, though she is but a child--it was a rash act, between you and I--for Connal's not grown up a likely lad for the girl to fancy; but that's neither here nor there: no, my word is pa.s.sed--when half drunk, may be--but no matter--it must be kept sober--drunk or sober, a gentleman must keep his word--_a fortiori_ a king--_a fortiori_ King Corny. See! was there this minute no such thing as parchment, deed, stamp, signature, or seal in the wide world, when once Corny has squeezed a friend's hand on a bargain, or a promise, 'tis fast, was it ever so much against me--'tis as strong to me as if I had squeezed all the lawyers' wax in the creation upon it."

Ormond admired the honourable sentiment; but was sorry there was any occasion for it--and he sighed; but it was a sigh of pity for Dora: not that he had ever seen White Connal, or known any thing of him--but _White Connal_ did not sound well; and her father's avowal, that it had been a rash engagement, did not seem to promise happiness to Dora in this marriage.

From the time he had been a boy, Harry Ormond had been in the habit of ferrying over to the Black Islands whenever Sir Ulick could spare him.

The hunting and shooting, and the life of lawless freedom he led on the Islands, had been delightful. King Corny, who had the command not only of boats, and of guns, and of fis.h.i.+ng-tackle, and of men, but of carpenters' tools, and of smiths' tools, and of a lathe, and of bra.s.s and ivory, and of all the things that the heart of boy could desire, had appeared to Harry, when he was a boy, the richest, the greatest, the happiest of men--the cleverest, too--the most ingenious: for King Corny had with his own hands made a violin and a rat-trap; and had made the best coat, and the best pair of shoes, and the best pair of boots, and the best hat; and had knit the best pair of stockings, and had made the best dunghill in his dominions; and had made a quarter of a yard of fine lace, and had painted a panorama. No wonder that King Corny had been looked up to, by the imagination of childhood, as "a personage high as human veneration could look."

But now, although our hero was still but a boy in many respects, yet in consequence of his slight commerce with the world, he had formed some comparisons, and made some reflections. He had heard, accidentally, the conversation of a few people of common sense, besides the sly, witty, and satirical remarks of Sir Ulick, upon _cousin Cornelius_; and it had occurred to Harry to question the utility and real grandeur of some of those things, which had struck his childish imagination. For example, he began to doubt whether it were worthy of a king or a gentleman to be his own shoemaker, hatter, and tailor; whether it were not better managed in society, where these things are performed by different tradesmen: still the things were wonderful, considering who made them, and under what disadvantages they were made: but Harry having now seen and compared Corny's violin with other violins, and having discovered that so much better could be had for money, with so much less trouble, his admiration had a little decreased. There were other points relative to external appearance, on which his eyes had been opened. In his boyish days, King Corny, going out to hunt with hounds and horn, followed with shouts by all who could ride, and all who could run, King Corny hallooing the dogs, and cheering the crowd, appeared to him the greatest, the happiest of mankind.