Sir Jasper Carew Part 29

"Here's our man, then," said MacNaghten, humoring the whim, as he pushed the innkeeper towards him.

"What's your name, my good fellow?" asked Curtis, with a supercilious look at the short but well-conditioned figure before him.

"Billy Mathews, sir," said the other, with difficulty restraining a smile at the dilapidated look of his interrogator.

"Well, Mathews, keep the Billy for your equals, my good friend. Mathews, I say, let us have the best your house affords, served in your best room and in your best manner. If I ate prison fare for nine weeks, sir, it is no reason that I am not accustomed to something different. My name is Joseph Curtis, of Meagh-valley House; I sat in Parliament for eight-and-twenty years, for the borough of Kilternon; and I was tried for a murder at the last commission. There, sir! it's not every day you have a guest who can say as much."

As the landlord was moving away to give his orders, Curtis called out once more:--

"Stay, sir; hear me out. There are spies of the Castle wherever I go.

Who have you here just now? Who's in this house?"

"There's but one gentleman here at present, sir. I've known him these twenty years, and I 'll vouch for it he's neither a Government spy nor an informer."

"And who will be satisfied with your guarantee, sir?" cried Curtis, insolently. "It's not a fellow in your position that can a.s.sure the scruples of a man in mine. Who is he? What's his name?"

"He's a respectable man, sir, well known in Dublin, and the son of one that held a good position once."

"His name,--his name!" cried Curtis, imperiously.

"It's no matter about his name!" replied the host, sulkily. "He has come to eat his breakfast here, as he does once or twice a week, and that's all that I have to say to him."

"But I 'll have his name,--I 'll insist upon it," shouted out Curtis, in a voice of high excitement; "persecuted and hunted down as I am, I'll defend myself. Your Castle bloodhounds shall see that Joe Curtis will not run from them. This gentleman here is the son of MacNaghten of Greenan. What signifies it to you if he be ruined! What affair is it of yours, I ask, if he has n't a sixpence in the world?--I'll pay for what he takes here. I'm responsible for everything. I have two thousand a year secured on my life,"--he stopped, and seemed to reflect for a moment, then added,--"that is, I may have it if I please."

MacNaghten made a signal for the innkeeper to serve the breakfast, and not notice any of the extravagances of his strange companion. Mathews was about to obey, when Curtis, recurring to his former thought, cried out,--

"Well, sir, this fellow's name?"

"Tell him who it is," whispered Dan, secretly; and the host said,--

"The gentleman is one Mr. Raper, sir, head clerk to Mr. f.a.gan, of Mary's Abbey."

"Leave the room--close the door," said Curtis, with an air of caution.

"I saw the signal you gave the innkeeper a moment ago, MacNaghten," said he, in the same low and guarded tone. "I read its meaning perfectly.

You would imply: The old fellow is not right--a crack in the upper story--humor him a bit. Don't deny it, man; you acted for the best; you thought, as many think, that my misfortunes had affected my intellect and sapped my understanding; and so they had done this many a day,"

added he, fiercely, "but for one thing. I had one grand security against madness, Dan; one great barrier, my boy: shall I tell it you? It was this, then: that if my head wandered sometimes, my heart never did--never! I hated the English and their party in this country with a hate that never slept, never relaxed! I knew well that I was the only man in Ireland that they could not put down. Some they bought--some they ruined--some they intimidated--some they destroyed by calumny. They tried all these with me, and at last were driven to a false accusation, and had me up for a murder! and that failed them, too! Here I stand, their opponent, just as I did fifty-two years ago, and the only man in all Ireland that dares to brave and defy them. They 'd make me a peer to-morrow, Dan; they 'd give me a colonial government; they 'd take me into the Cabinet; there is not a demand of mine they 'd say 'No' to, if I 'd join them; but my answer is, 'Never! never!' Go down to your grave, Joe Curtis, ruined, ragged, half-famished, mayhap. Let men call you a fool, and worse! but the time will come, and the people will say: There was once a man in Ireland that never truckled to the Castle, nor fawned on the Viceroy; and that when he stood in the dock, with his life on the venture, told them that he despised their vengeance, though he knew that they were covering it with all the solemnity of a law-court; and that man his contemporaries--ay, even his friends--were pleased to call Mad!"

"Come, come, Curtis, you know well this is not my impression of you; you only say so jestingly."

"It's a sorry theme to crack jokes upon," said the other, sadly. He paused, and seemed to reflect deeply for some minutes, and then, in a voice of peculiar meaning, and with a look of intense cunning in his small gray eyes, said, "We heard the name he mentioned,--Raper, f.a.gan's man of business. Let 's have him in, MacNaghten; the fellow is a half simpleton in many things. Let's talk to him."

"Would you ask Mr. Raper to join our breakfast?" asked Dan of the innkeeper.

"He has just finished his own, sir; some bread and watercresses, with a cup of milk, are all that he takes."

"Poor fellow!" said Dan, "I see him yonder in the summer-house; he appears to be in hard study, for he has not raised his head since we entered the room. I 'll go and ask him how he is."

MacNaghten had not only time to approach the little table where Raper was seated un.o.bserved, but even to look over the object of his study, before his presence was recognized.

"German, Mr. Raper; reading German?" cried MacNaghten. "I know the characters, at least."

"Yes, sir, it is German; an odd volume of Richter that I picked up a few days ago. A difficult author at first, somewhat involved and intricate in construction: here, for instance is a pa.s.sage--"

"My dear friend, it is all a Greek chorus to me, or anything else you can fancy equally unintelligible."

"It is the story of an humble man, a village cobbler, who becomes by an accident of fortune suddenly rich. Now, the author, instead of describing the incidents of life and the vicissitudes that encounter him, leaves us only to guess, or rather to supply them for ourselves, by simply dwelling upon all the 'Gedankskriege,' or mental conflicts, that are the consequences of his altered position. The notion is ingenious, and if not overlayed with a certain dreamy mysticism, would be very interesting."

"I," said Dan, "would far rather hear of his acts than his reflections.

What he did would amuse me more to know than to learn why."

"But how easy to imagine the one!" exclaimed Raper. "Wealth has its habits all stereotyped: from Dives to our own days the catalogue has been ever the same, 'purple and fine linen.' And if some have added to the mere sensual pleasures the higher enjoyments derivable from objects of art and the cultivation of letters, has it not been because their own natures were more elevated, and required such refinements as daily necessaries? The humble man, suddenly enriched, lives no longer in the sphere of his former a.s.sociates, but ascends into one of whose habits he knows nothing; and Jean Paul condemns him for this, and reminds him that when a river is swollen by autumn rains it does not desert its ancient channel, but enlarges the sphere of its utility, by spreading fertilization on each side of it, seeming to think: I may, by the accidents of life, grow small and humble again; it is as well that I should not quit the tiny course I have followed in my humble fortunes."

"And do you agree with him?" asked Dan, more amazed by the enthusiasm of his companion than by the theme that suggested it.

"I do so in everything; I speak, of course, as one who knows nothing of those ambitions by which wealthy men are encompa.s.sed; I am not in the position of one who has seen and felt these fascinations, and who emerges from his poverty to re-a.s.sume a former station. Take the case of Mr. Curtis, for instance."

"What! old Curtis--Joe Curtis?" asked Dan, eagerly.

"Yes, Curtis, formerly of Meagh-valley. Well, if his claim be as good as they suppose, he 'll not only inherit the great Wicklow estates, but the Western property so long in Chancery."

MacNaghten saw that Raper was pouring forth this knowledge without being conscious that he was making an important revelation, and gave a dry, commonplace a.s.sent.

"Who can say what may not be his income?" exclaimed Raper, thoughtfully; "twenty thousand a-year, at the least."

"And his prospects are good, you say,--his chances of success?"

"The marriage certificate of Noah Curtis and Eleanor Carew has been discovered, sir, and if the will of Fownes Carew be authentic, the case, I believe, is clear."

"What Carews were these?"

"The ancestors of Walter Carew, sir, whose estates now descend to the heirs of the female branch."

"And Curtis will inherit these?"

The tone in which Dan uttered these words so startled Raper that he suddenly recovered his self-possession, and remembered how unguardedly he had related this mysterious piece of intelligence.

"When was this discovery made?--who chanced to trace this relations.h.i.+p between Curtis and the Carew family?" cried MacNaghten, in intense anxiety.

A signal from Raper suddenly suggested caution and reserve; but Dan, too much excited to attend it, went on:

"Sir, never believe it! It is some infernal scheme concocted between f.a.gan and the lawyers. They have put forward this wretched old man, half-witted as he is--"

A hand grasped Dan's arm as he said this; he turned, and there stood Curtis beside him!

"I 've heard you both!" said the old man, dryly. "To you, sir," said he to Raper, "I owe my thanks for a piece of welcome news; to you, MacNaghten, I feel grateful for all your candor!"

"Come, come, Curtis; be angry with me, if you will; but for Heaven's sake do not lend yourself to these base plots and schemes. If there be a conspiracy to rob poor Walter's widow and her child, let not one of his oldest, best friends have any share in it."