The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 23

"I cannot frame even a conjecture," sighed Upton, languidly. "I ought to be in the Brazils for a week or so about that slave question; and then the sooner I reach Constantinople the better."

"Sha' n't they want you at Paris?" asked Harcourt, who felt a kind of quiet vengeance in developing what he deemed the weak vanity of the other.

"Yes," sighed he again; "but I can't be everywhere." And so saying, he lounged away, while it would have taken a far more subtle listener than Harcourt to say whether he was mystifying the other, or the dupe of his own self-esteem.

CHAPTER XVIII. BILLY TRAYNOR AS ORATOR

Three weeks rolled over,--an interval not without its share of interest for the inhabitants of the little village of Leenane, since on one morning Mr. Craggs had made his appearance on his way to Clifden, and after an absence of two days returned to the Castle. The subject for popular discussion and surmise had not yet declined, when a boat was seen to leave Glencore, heavily laden with trunks and travelling gear; and as she neared the land, the "lord" was detected amongst the pa.s.sengers, looking very ill,--almost dying; he pa.s.sed up the little street of the village, scarcely noticing the uncovered heads which saluted him respectfully. Indeed, he scarcely lifted up his eyes, and, as the acute observers remarked, never once turned a glance towards the opposite sh.o.r.e, where the Castle stood.

He had not reached the end of the village, when a chaise with four horses arrived at the spot. No time was lost in arranging the trunks and portmanteaus, and Lord Glencore sat moodily on a bank, listlessly regarding what went forward. At length Craggs came up, and, touching his cap in military fas.h.i.+on, announced all was ready.

Lord Glencore arose slowly, and looked languidly around him; his features wore a mingled expression of weariness and anxiety, like one not fully awakened from an oppressive dream. He turned his eyes on the people, who at a respectful distance stood around, and in a voice of peculiar melancholy said, "Good-bye."

"A good journey to you, my Lord, and safe back again to us," cried a number together.

"Eh--what--what was that?" cried he, suddenly; and the tones were shrill and discordant in which he spoke.

A warning gesture from Craggs imposed silence on the crowd, and not a word was uttered.

"I thought they said something about coming back again," muttered Glencore, gloomily.

"They were wis.h.i.+ng you a good journey, my Lord," replied Craggs.

"Oh, that was it, was it?" And so saying, with bent-down head he walked feebly forward and entered the carriage. Craggs was speedily on the box, and the next moment they were away.

It is no part of our task to dwell on the sage speculations and wise surmises of the village on this event. They had not, it is true, much "evidence" before them, but they were hardy guessers, and there was very little within the limits of possibility which they did not summon to the aid of their imaginations. All, however, were tolerably agreed upon one point,--that to leave the place while the young lord was still unable to quit his bed, and too weak to sit up, was unnatural and unfeeling; traits which, "after all," they thought "not very surprising, since the likes of them lords never cared for anybody."

Colonel Harcourt still remained at Glencore, and under his rigid sway the strictest blockade of the coast was maintained, nor was any intercourse whatever permitted with the village. A boat from the Castle, meeting another from Leenane, half way in the lough, received the letters and whatever other resources the village supplied. All was done with the rigid exactness of a quarantine regulation; and if the mainland had been scourged with plague, stricter measures of exclusion could scarcely have been enforced.

In comparison with the present occupant of the Castle, the late one was a model of amiability; and the village, as is the wont in the case, now discovered a vast number of good qualities in the "lord," when they had lost him. After a while, however, the guesses, the speculations, and the comparisons all died away, and the Castle of Glencore was as much dreamland to their imaginations as, seen across the lough in the dim twilight of an autumn evening, its towers might have appeared to their eyes.

It was about a month after Lord Glencore's departure, of a fine, soft evening in summer, Billy Traynor suddenly appeared in the village. Billy was one of a cla.s.s who, whatever their rank in life, are always what Coleridge would have called "noticeable men." He was soon, therefore, surrounded with a knot of eager and inquiring friends, all solicitous to know something of the life he was leading, what they were doing "beyant at the Castle."

"It's a mighty quiet studious kind of life," said Billy, "but agrees with me wonderfully; for I may say that until now I never was able to give my 'janius' fair play. Professional life is the ruin of the student; and being always obleeged to be thinkin' of the bags destroyed my taste for letters." A grin of self-approval at his own witticism closed this speech.

"But is it true, Billy, the lord is going to break up house entirely, and not come back here?" asked Peter Slevin, the sacristan, whose rank and station warranted his a.s.suming the task of cross-questioner.

"There 's various ways of breakin' up a house," said Billy. "Ye may do so in a moral sinse, or in a physical sinse; you may obliterate, or extinguish, or, without going so far, you may simply obfuscate,--do you perceave?"

"Yes!" said the sacristan, on whom every eye was now bent, to see if he was able to follow subtleties that had outwitted the rest.

"And whin I say _obfuscate_," resumed Billy, "I open a question of disputed etymology, bekase tho' Lucretius thinks the word _obfuscator_ original, there's many supposes it comes from _ob_ and _fucus_, the dye the ancients used in their wool, as we find in Horace, _lana fuco medicata_; while Cicero employs it in another sense, and says, _facere fuc.u.m_, which is as much as to say, humbuggin' somebody,--do ye mind?"

"Begorra, he might guess that anyhow!" muttered a shrewd little tailor, with a significance that provoked hearty laughter.

"And now," continued Billy, with an air of triumph, "we'll proceed to the next point."

"Ye needn't trouble yerself then," said Terry Lynch, "for Peter has gone home."

And so, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the meeting, it turned out to be the case; the sacristan had retired from the controversy. "Come in here to Mrs.

Moore's, Billy, and take a gla.s.s with us," said Terry; "it isn't often we see you in these parts."

"If the honorable company will graciously vouchsafe and condescind to let me trate them to a half-gallon," said Billy, "it will be the proudest event of my terrestrial existence."

The proposition was received with a cordial enthusiasm, flattering to all concerned; and in a few minutes after, Billy Traynor sat at the head of a long table in the neat parlor of "The Griddle," with a company of some fifteen or sixteen very convivially disposed friends around him.

"If I was Caesar, or Lucretius, or Nebuchadnezzar, I couldn't be prouder," said Billy, as he looked down the board. "And let moralists talk as they will, there's a beautiful expansion of sentiment, there's a fine genial overflowin' of the heart, in gatherin's like this, where we mingle our feelin's and our philosophy; and our love and our learning walk hand in hand like brothers--pa.s.s the sperits, Mr. Shea. If we look to the ancient writers, what do we see!--Lemons! bring in some lemons, Mickey.--What do we see, I say, but that the very highest enjoyment of the haythen G.o.ds was--Hot wather! why won't they send in more hot wather?"

"Begorra, if I was a haythen G.o.d, I 'd like a little whisky in it,"

muttered Terry, dryly.

"Where was I?" asked Billy, a little disconcerted by this sally, and the laugh it excited. "I was expatiatin' upon celestial convivialities. The _nodes coenoeque deum_,--them elegant hospitalities where wisdom was moistened with nectar, and wit washed down with ambrosia. It is not, by coorse, to be expected," continued he, modestly, "that we mere mortials can compete with them elegant refections. But, as Ovid says, we can at least _diem jucundam decipere_."

The unknown tongue had now restored to Billy all the reverence and respect of his auditory, and he continued to expatiate very eloquently on the wholesome advantages to be derived from convivial intercourse, both amongst G.o.ds and men; rather slyly intimating that either on the score of the fluids, or the conversation, his own leanings lay towards "the humanities."

"For, after all," said he, "'tis our own wakenesses is often the source of our most refined enjoyments. No, Mrs. Ca.s.sidy, ye need n't be blus.h.i.+n'. I 'm considerin' my subject in a high ethnological and metaphysical sinse." Mrs. Ca.s.sidy's confusion, and the mirth it excited, here interrupted the orator.

"The meeting is never tired of hearin' you, Billy," said Terry Lynch; "but if it was plazin' to ye to give us a song, we'd enjoy it greatly."

"Ah!" said Billy, with a sigh, "I have taken my partin' kiss with the Muses; _non mihi licet increpare digitis lyram_:--

"'No more to feel poetic fire, No more to touch the soundin' lyre; But wiser coorses to begin, I now forsake my violin.'"

An honest outburst of regret and sorrow broke from the a.s.sembly, who eagerly pressed for an explanation of this calamitous change.

"The thing is this," said Billy: "if a man is a creature of mere leisure and amus.e.m.e.nt, the fine arts--and by the fine arts I mean music, paintin', and the ladies--is an elegant and very refined subject of cultivation; but when you raise your cerebrial faculties to grander and loftier considerations, to explore the difficult ragions of polemic or political truth, to investigate the subtleties of the schools, and penetrate the mysteries of science, then, take my word for it, the fine arts is just snares,--devil a more than snares! And whether it is soft sounds seduces you, or elegant tints, or the union of both,--women, I mane,--you 'll never arrive at anything great or tri-um-phant till you wane yourself away from the likes of them vanities. Look at the haythen mythology; consider for a moment who is the chap that represents Music,--a lame blackguard, with an ugly face, they call Pan. Ay, indeed, Pan! If you wanted to see what respect they had for the art, it's easy enough to guess, when this crayture represints it; and as to Paintin', on my conscience, they have n't a G.o.d at all that ever took to the brush.--Pa.s.s up the sperits, Mickey," said he, somewhat blown and out of breath by this effort. "Maybe," said he, "I'm wearin' you."

"No, no, no," loudly responded the meeting.

"Maybe I'm imposin' too much of personal details on the house," added he, pompously.

"Not at all; never a bit," cried the company.

"Because," resumed he, slowly, "if I did so, I 'd have at least the excuse of say in', like the great Pitt, 'These may be my last words from this place.'"

An unfeigned murmur of sorrow ran through the meeting, and he resumed:--

"Ay, ladies and gintlemin, Billy Traynor is takin' his 'farewell benefit;' he's not humbuggin'. I 'm not like them chaps that's always positively goin', but stays on at the unanimous request of the whole world. No; I'm really goin' to leave you."

"What for? Where to, Billy?" broke from a number of voices together.

"I 'll tell ye," said he,--"at least so far as I can tell; because it would n't be right nor decent to 'print the whole of the papers for the house,' as they say in parliamint. I 'm going abroad with the young lord; we are going to improve our minds, and cultivate our janiuses, by study and foreign travel. We are first to settle in Germany, where we 're to enter a University, and commince a coorse of modern tongues, French, Sweadish, and Spanish; imbibin' at the same time a smatterin' of science, such as chemistry, conchology, and the use of the globes."

"Oh dear! oh dear!" murmured the meeting, in wonder and admiration.

"I 'm not goin' to say that we 'll neglect mechanics, metaphysics, and astrology; for we mane to be cosmonopolists in knowledge. As for myself, ladies and gintlemin, it's a proud day that sees me standin' here to say these words. I, that was ragged, without a shoe to my foot,--without breeches,--never mind, I was, as the poet says, _nudus nummis ac vestimentis_,--