Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 30

What savages some men are, thought Sir Ulick: he walked to the window, and looking out, hoped that Harry Ormond would soon make his appearance.

"You are doing, or undoing, a great deal here, cousin Cornelius, I see, as usual."

"Yes, but what I am doing, stand or fall, will never be my undoing--I am no speculator. How do your silver mines go on, Sir Ulick? I hear all the silver mines in Ireland turn out to be lead."

"I wish they did," said Sir Ulick, "for then we could turn all our lead to gold. Those silver mines certainly did not pay--I've a notion you found the same with your reclaimed bog here, cousin Cornelius--I understand that after a short time it relapses, and is worse than ever, like most things pretending to be reclaimed."

"Speak for yourself, there, Sir Ulick," said Cornelius; "you ought to know, certainly, for some thirty years ago, I think you pretended to be a reclaimed rake."

"I don't remember it," said Sir Ulick.

"I do, and so would poor Emmy Annaly, if she was alive, which it's fortunate for her she is not (broken-hearted angel, if ever there was one, by wedlock! and the only one of the Annalys I ever liked)," said Cornelius to himself, in a low leisurely voice of soliloquy. Then resuming his conversation tone, and continuing his speech to Sir Ulick, "I say you pretended thirty years ago, I remember, to be a reformed rake, and looked mighty smooth and plausible--and promised fair that the improvement was solid, and was to last for ever and a day. But six months after marriage comes a relapse, and the reclaimed rake's worse than ever. Well, to be sure, that's in favour of your opinion against all things pretending to be reclaimed. But see, my poor bog, without promising so well, performs better; for it's six years, instead of six months, that I've seen no tendency to relapse. See, the _cattle_ upon it speak for themselves; an honest calf won't lie for any man."

"I give you joy of the success of your improvements. I admire, too, your ploughing team and ploughing tackle," said Sir Ulick, with an ironical smile. "You don't go into any indiscreet expense for farming implements or prize cattle."

"No," said Cornelius, "I don't prize the prize cattle; the best prize a man can get, and the only one worth having, is that which he must give himself, or not get, and of which he is the best judge at all sasons."

"What prize, may I ask?"

"You may ask, and I'll answer--the prize of _success_; and, success to myself, I have, it."

"And succeeding in all your ends by such n.o.ble means must be doubly gratifying--and is doubly commendable and surprising," said Sir Ulick.

"May I ask--for it's my turn now to play ignoramus--may I ask, what n.o.ble means excites this gratuitous commendation and surprise?"

"I commend, in the first place, the economy of your ploughing tackle--hay ropes, hay traces, and hay halters--doubly useful and convenient for harness and food."

Corny replied, "Some people I know, think the most expensive harness and tackle, and the most expensive ways of doing every thing, the best; but I don't know if that is the way for the poor to grow rich--it may be the way for the rich to grow poor: we are all poor people in the Black Islands, and I can't afford, or think it good policy, to give the example of extravagant new ways of doing old things."

"'Tis a pity you don't continue the old Irish style of ploughing by the tail," said Sir Ulick.

"That is against humanity to brute _bastes_, which, without any sickening palaver of sentiment, I practise. Also, it's against an act of parliament, which I regard sometimes--that is, when I understand them; which, the way you parliament gentlemen draw them up, is not always particularly intelligible to plain common sense; and I have no lawyers here, thank Heaven! to consult: I am forced to be legislator, and lawyer, and ploughman, and all, you see, the best I can for myself."

He opened the window, and called to give some orders to the man, or, as he called him, the boy--a boy of sixty--who was ploughing.

"Your team, I see, is worthy of your tackle," pursued Sir Ulick--"A mule, a bull, and two lean horses. I pity the foremost poor devil of a horse, who must starve in the midst of plenty, while the horse, bull, and even mule, in a string behind him, are all plucking and _munging_ away at their hay ropes."

Cornelius joined in Sir Ulick's laugh, which shortened its duration.

"'Tis comical ploughing, I grant," said he, "but still, to my fancy, any thing's better and more profitable _nor_ the tragi-comic ploughing you practise every sason in Dublin."

"I?" said Sir Ulick.

"Ay, you and all your courtiers, ploughing the half acre [Footnote: Ploughing the half acre. The English reader will please to inquire the meaning of this phrase from any Irish courtier.] continually, pacing up and down that Castle-yard, while you're waiting in attendance there.

Every one to his taste, but--

'If there's a man on earth I hate, Attendance and dependence be his fate.'"

"After all, I have very good prospects in life," said Sir Ulick.

"Ay, you've been always living on prospects; for my part, I'd rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect."

"Cornelius, what are you doing here to the roof of your house?" said Sir Ulick, striking off to another subject. "What a vast deal of work you do contrive to cut out for yourself."

"I'd rather cut it out for myself than have any body to cut it out for me," said Cornelius.

"Upon my word, this will require all your extraordinary ingenuity, cousin."

"Oh, I'll engage I'll make a good job of it, in my sense of the word, though not in yours; for I know, in your vocabulary, that's only a good job where you pocket money and do nothing; now my good jobs never bring me in a farthing, and give me a great deal to do into the bargain."

"I don't envy you such jobs, indeed," said Sir Ulick; "and are you sure that at last you make them good jobs in any acceptation of the term?"

"Sure! a man's never sure of any thing in this world, but of being abused. But one comfort, my own conscience, for which I've a trifling respect, can't reproach me; since my jobs, good or bad, have cost my poor country nothing."

On this point Sir Ulick was particularly sore, for he had the character of being one of the greatest _jobbers_ in Ireland. With a face of much political prudery, which he well knew how to a.s.sume, he began to exculpate himself. He confessed that much public money had pa.s.sed through his hands; but he protested that none of it had stayed with him.

No man, who had done so much for different administrations, had been so ill paid.

"Why the deuce do you work for them, then? You won't tell me it's for love--Have you got any character by it?--if you haven't profit, what have you? I would not let them make me a dupe, or may be something worse, if I was you," said Cornelius, looking him full in the face.

"Savage!" said Sir Ulick again to himself. The tomahawk was too much for him--Sir Ulick felt that it was fearful odds to stand fencing according to rule with one who would not scruple to gouge or scalp, if provoked.

Sir Ulick now stood silent, smiling forced smiles, and looking on while Cornelius played quite at his ease with little Tommy, blew shrill blasts through the whistle, and boasted that he had made a good job of that whistle any way.

Harry Ormond, to Sir Ulick's great relief, now appeared. Sir Ulick advanced to meet him with an air of cordial friends.h.i.+p, which brought the honest flush of pleasure and grat.i.tude into the young man's face, who darted a quick look at Cornelius, as much as to say, "You see you were wrong--he is glad to see me--he is come to see me."

Cornelius said nothing, but stroked the child's head, and seemed taken up entirely with him; Sir Ulick spoke of Lady O'Shane, and of his hopes that prepossessions were wearing off. "If Miss Black were out of the way, things would all go right; but she is one of the mighty good--too good ladies, who are always meddling with other people's business, and making mischief."

Harry, who hated her, that is, as much as he could hate any body, railed at her vehemently, saying more against her than he thought, and concluded by joining in Sir Ulick's wish for her departure from Castle Hermitage, but not with any view to his own return thither: on that point he was quite resolute and steady. He would never, he said, be the cause of mischief. Lady O'Shane did not like him--why, he did not know, and had no right to inquire--and was too proud to inquire, if he had a right. It was enough that her ladys.h.i.+p had proved to him her dislike, and refused him protection at his utmost need: he should never again sue for her hospitality. He declared that Sir Ulick should no more be disquieted by his being an inmate at Castle Hermitage.

Sir Ulick became more warm and eloquent in dissuading him from this resolution, the more he perceived that Ormond was positively fixed in his determination.

The cool looker-on all the time remarked this, and Cornelius was convinced that he had from the first been right in his own opinion, that Sir Ulick was "_s.h.i.+rking the boy_."

"And where's Marcus, sir? would not he come with you to see us?" said Ormond.

"Marcus is gone off to England. He bid me give you his kindest love: he was hurried, and regretted he could not come to take leave of you; but he was obliged to go off with the Annalys, to escort her ladys.h.i.+p to England, where he will remain this year, I dare say. I am much concerned to say, that poor Lady Annaly and Miss Annaly--" Sir Ulick cleared his throat, and gave a suspicious look at Ormond.

This glance at Harry, the moment Sir Ulick p.r.o.nounced the words _Miss Annaly_, first directed aright the attention of Cornelius.

"Lady Annaly and Miss Annaly! are they ill? What's the matter, for Heaven's sake!" exclaimed Harry with great anxiety; but p.r.o.nouncing both the ladies' names precisely in the same tone, and with the same freedom of expression.

Sir Ulick took breath. "Neither of the ladies are ill--absolutely ill; but they have both been greatly shocked by accounts of young Annaly's sudden illness. It is feared an inflammation upon his lungs, brought on by violent cold--his mother and sister left us this morning--set off for England to him immediately. Lady Annaly thought of you, Harry, my boy--you must be a prodigious favourite--in the midst of all her affliction, and the hurry of this sudden departure, this morning: she gave me a letter for you, which I determined to deliver with my own hands."

While he spoke, Sir Ulick, affecting to search for the letter among many in his pocket, studied with careless intermitting glances our young hero's countenance, and Cornelius O'Shane studied Sir Ulick's: Harry tore open the letter eagerly, and coloured a good deal when he saw the inside.

"I have no business here reading that boy's secrets in his face," cried Cornelius O'Shane, raising himself on his crutches--"I'll step out and look at my roof. Will you come, Sir Ulick, and see how the job goes on?"

His crutch slipped as he stepped across the hearth--Harry ran to him: "Oh, sir, what are you doing? You are not able to walk yet without me--why are you going? Secrets did you say?" (The words recurred to his ear.) "I have no secrets--there's no secrets in this letter--it's only--the reason I looked foolish was that here's a list of my own faults, which I made like a fool, and dropped like a fool--but they could not have fallen into better or kinder hands than Lady Annaly's."

He offered the letter and its enclosure to Cornelius and Sir Ulick.

Cornelius drew back. "I don't want to see the list of your faults, man,"