Читать книгу One Of Them - Lever Charles James - Страница 14

The morning was raw, cold, and ungenial, as Layton took his outside seat on the coach for Dublin. For sake of shelter, being but poorly provided against ill weather, he had taken the seat behind the coachman, the place beside him being reserved for a traveller who was to be taken up outside the town. The individual in question was alluded to more than once by the driver and the guard as “the Captain,” and in the abundance of fresh hay provided for his feet, and the care taken to keep his seat dry, there were signs of a certain importance being attached to his presence. As they gained the foot of a hill, where the road crossed a small bridge, they found the stranger awaiting them, with his carpet-bag; he had no other luggage, but in his own person showed unmistakable evidence of being well prepared for a journey. He was an elderly man, short, square, and thick-set, with a rosy, cheerful countenance, and a bright, merry eye. As he took off his hat, punctiliously returning the coachee’s salute, he showed a round, bald head, fringed around the base by a curly margin of rich brown hair. So much Layton could mark, – all signs, as he read them, of a jovial temperament and a healthy constitution; nor did the few words he uttered detract from the impression: they were frank and cheerful, and their tone rich and pleasing to the ear.

The stranger’s first care on ascending to his place was to share a very comfortable rug with his neighbor, the civility being done in a way that would have made refusal almost impossible; his next move was to inquire if Layton was a smoker, and, even before the answer, came the offer of a most fragrant cigar. The courtesy of the offered snuff-box amongst our grandfathers is now replaced by the polite proffer of a cigar, and, simple as the act of attention is in itself, there are some men who are perfect masters in the performance. The Captain was of this category; and although Layton was a cold, proud, off-standing man, such was the other’s tact, that, before they had journeyed twenty miles in company, an actual intimacy had sprung up between them.

There is no pleasanter companionship to the studious and reading man than that of a man of life and the world, one whose experience, drawn entirely from the actual game of life, is full of incident and adventure. The Captain had travelled a great deal and seen much, and there was about all his observations the stamp of a mind that had learned to judge men and things by broader, wider rules than are the guides of those who live in more narrow spheres.

It was in discoursing on the political condition of Ireland that they reached the little village of Cookstown, about a mile from which, on a slight eminence, a neat cottage was observable, the trim laurel hedge that separated it from the road being remarkable in a country usually deficient in such foliage.

“A pretty spot,” remarked Layton, carelessly, “and, to all seeming, untenanted.”

“Yes, it seems empty,” said the other, in the same easy tone.

“There’s never been any one livin’ there, Captain, since that,” said the coachman, turning round on his seat, and addressing the stranger.

“Since what?” asked Layton, abruptly.

“He is alluding to an old story, – a very old story, now,” rejoined the other. “There were two men – a father and son – named Shehan, taken from that cottage in the year of Emmet’s unhappy rebellion, under a charge of high treason, and hanged.”

“I remember the affair perfectly: Curran defended them. If I remember aright, too, they were convicted on the evidence of a noted informer.”

“The circumstance is painfully impressed on my memory, by the fact that I have the misfortune to bear the same name; and it is by my rank alone that I am able to avoid being mistaken for him. My name is Holmes.”

“To be sure,” cried Layton, “Holmes was the name; Curran rendered it famous on that day.”

The coachman had turned round to listen to this conversation, and at its conclusion touched his hat to the Captain as if in polite acquiescence.

By the time they had reached Castle Blayney, such had been the Captain’s success in ingratiating himself into Layton’s good opinion, that the doctor had accepted his invitation to dinner.

“We shall not dine with the coach travellers,” whispered the stranger, “but at a small house I ‘ll show you just close by. I have already ordered my cutlet there, and there will be enough for us both.”

Never was speech less boastful; a most admirable hot dinner was ready as they entered the little parlor, and such a bottle of port as Layton fancied he had never tasted the equal. By good luck there was ample time to enjoy these excellent things, as the mail was obliged to await at this place for an hour or more the arrival of a cross-post. A second and a third brother of the same racy vintage succeeded; and Layton, warmed by the generous wine, grew open and confidential, not only in speaking of the past, but also to reveal all his hopes for the future, and the object of his journey. Though the Captain was nothing less than a man of science, he could fathom sufficiently the details the other gave to see that the speaker was no ordinary man, and his discovery no small invention.

“Ay,” said the doctor, as, carried away by the excitement of the wine, he grew boastful and vain, “you ‘ll see, sir, that the man who sat shivering beside you on the outside of the mail without a great-coat to cover him, will, one of these days, be recognized as amongst the first of his nation, and along with Hunter and Bell and Brodie will stand the name of Herbert Layton!”

“You had a very distinguished namesake once, a Fellow of Trinity – ”

“Myself, sir, none other. I am the man!” cried he, in a burst of triumphant pride. “I am – that is, I was – the Regius Professor of Medicine; I was Gold Medallist in 18 – ; then Chancellor’s Prizeman; the following year I beat Stack and Naper, – you ‘ve heard of them, I ‘m sure, on the Fellowship bench; I carried away the Verse prize from George Wolffe; and now, this day, – ay, sir, this day, – I don’t think I ‘d have eaten if you had not asked me to dine with you.”

“Come, come,” said the Captain, pushing the decanter towards him, “there are good days coming. Even in a moneyed point of view, your discovery is worth some fifteen or twenty thousand pounds.”

“I ‘d not sell it for a million; it shall be within the reach of the humblest peasant in the land the day I have perfected the details. It shall be for Parliament – the two Houses of the nation – to reward me, or I ‘ll never accept a shilling.”

“That’s a very noble and high-spirited resolve. I like you for it; I respect you for it,” said the Captain, warmly.

“I know well what had been my recognition if I had been born a German or a Frenchman. It is in England alone scientific discovery brings neither advancement nor honor. They pension the informer that betrays his confederates, and they leave the man of intellect to die, as Chatterton died, of starvation in a garret. Is n’t that true?”

“Too true, – too true, indeed!” sighed the Captain, mournfully.

“And as to the Ireland of long ago,” said Layton, “how much more wise her present-day rulers are than those who governed her in times past, and whose great difficulty was to deal with a dominant class, and to induce them to abate any of the pretensions which years of tried loyalty would seem to have confirmed into rights! I speak as one who was once a ‘United Irishman,’” said he.

Laying down the glass he was raising to his lips, the Captain leaned across the table and grasped Layton’s hand; and although there was nothing in the gesture which a bystander could have noticed, it seemed to convey a secret signal, for Layton cried out exultingly, —

“A brother in the cause!”

“You may believe how your frank, outspoken nature has won upon me,” said he, “when I have confided to you a secret that would, if revealed, certainly cost me my commission, and might imperil my life; but I will do more, Layton, I will tell you that our fraternity exists in full vigor, – not here, but thousands of miles away, – and England will have to reap in India the wrongs she has sown in Ireland.”

“With this I have no sympathy,” burst in Layton, boldly. “Our association – at least, as I understood it – was to elevate and enfranchise Ireland, not humiliate England. It was well enough for Wolfe Tone and men of his stamp to take this view, but Nielson and myself were differently minded, and we deemed that the empire would be but the greater when all who served it were equals.”

Was it that the moment was propitious, was it that Layton’s persuasive power was at its highest, was it that the earnest zeal of the man had carried conviction with his words? However it happened, the Captain, after listening to a long and well-reasoned statement, leaned his head thoughtfully on his hand, and said, —

“I wish I had known you in earlier days, Layton. You have placed these things before me in a point I have never seen them before, nor do I believe that there are ten men amongst us who have. Grant me a favor,” said he, as if a sudden thought had just crossed him.

“What is it?” asked Layton.

“Come and stay a week or two with me at my little cottage at Glasnevin; I am a bachelor, and live that sort of secluded life that will leave you ample time for your own pursuits.”

“Give me a corner for my glass bottles and a furnace, and I ‘m your man,” said Layton, laughingly.

“You shall make a laboratory of anything but the dinner-room,” cried Holmes, shaking hands on the compact, and thus sealing it.

The guard’s horn soon after summoned them to their places, and they once more were on the road.

The men who have long waged a hand-to-hand combat with fortune, unfriended and uncheered, experience an intense enjoyment when comes the moment in which they can pour out all their sorrows and their selfishness into some confiding ear. It is no ordinary pleasure with them to taste the sympathy of a willing listener. Layton felt all the ecstasy of such a moment, and he told not alone of himself and his plans and his hopes, but of his son Alfred, – what high gifts the youth possessed, and how certain was he, if common justice should be but accorded to him, to win a great place in the world’s estimation.

“The Captain” was an eager listener to all the other said, and never interrupted, save to throw in some passing word of encouragement, some cheering exhortation to bear up bravely and courageously.

Layton’s heart warmed with the words of encouragement, and he confided many a secret source of hope that he had never revealed before. He told how, in the course of his labors, many an unexpected discovery had burst upon him, – now some great fact applicable to the smelting of metals, now some new invention available to agriculture. They were subjects, he owned, he had not pursued to any perfect result, but briefly committed to some rough notes, reserving them for a time of future leisure.

“And if I cannot convince the world,” said he, laughingly, “that they have neglected and ignored a great genius, I hope, at least, to make you a convert to that opinion.”

“You see those tall elms yonder?” said Holmes, as they drew nigh Dublin. “Well, screened beneath their shade lies the little cottage I have told you about. Quiet and obscure enough now, but I ‘m greatly mistaken if it will not one day be remembered as the spot where Herbert Layton lived when he brought his great discovery to completion.”

“Do you really think so?” cried Layton, with a swelling feeling about the heart as though it would burst his side. “Oh, if I could only come to feel that hope myself! How it would repay me for all I have gone through! How it would reconcile me to my own heart!”