Читать книгу Luttrell Of Arran - Lever Charles James - Страница 14

“When that old man comes,” said Grenfell – “Malone, I think, is the name – let him come in here. I want to speak to him.”

“He’s outside now, before the door,” said O’Rorke, whose prying looks showed how eager he felt to know what might be the subject of their conversation.

“Does he hold any land in this neighbourhood?”

“He’s like the rest,” replied the other, half sullenly; “he lives where he can, and how he can.”

“What you would call a squatter?” said the Englishman, who smiled at his own sharpness in employing the word.

“What I wouldn’t call any such thing,” replied O’Rorke, firmly. “No more than I’d say it was squatting to sit down on my own hearthstone.”

“Which, perhaps, wouldn’t be your own, my good friend, if you were merely a tenant, and not a solvent one.”

“You may talk that way up in Leinster, or some of the counties that border on Leinster; but I tell you that you know mighty little of Ireland if you think that what your newspapers call the ‘Great name of England’ terrifies any one down here. Just try it. It’s about fifty miles from this to the Land’s End, and I’ll give you all that distance to find ten, no, but five men, that you’ll frighten by the threat of British law or British vengeance – which is about the same thing.”

“I’m sorry to hear it; that is to say, I should be sorry it was true.”

“Well, if you mean to deny, why don’t you prove it? What’s easier than to tell the carman we’re not going to Westport, we’re going up through Donegal to count the people that’s in love with the British rule in Ireland! You shake your head. I don’t wonder, indeed; no shame to you, that you wouldn’t like the journey. But I’ll tell you what you can do instead of it,” said he, with a firm and steady voice.

“What’s that?”

“Leave sixpence here, in my hands, and it will treat every well-wisher of England from this to the Giant’s Causeway! Isn’t that a fine investment for you?”

Grenfel’s face flashed, his brow darkened, and he tarned to hurl a stern reproof to this insolence; but he saw in the elated look of the other all the delight of one who was gradually drawing an adversary into the lists, and to a combat in which practice had given him a certain dexterity.

Determined, at all events, to foil this design, the Englishman affected indifference, looked at his watch, turned over some papers that lay on the table, and then carelessly said, “Send in Malone here.”

With the dogged air of one disappointed and baffled in his designs, O’Rorke left the room, and soon after the old man entered, stroking down his white hair as he came forward, and making his reverences with a strange mixture of servility and defiance.

“Your name is Malone?” said Grenfell.

“Peter Malone, Sir.”

“Come nearer, Malone. I have heard a good deal about you from my friend, whom you treated so hospitably up in the mountains, and he has also spoken to me of a sort of plan – I won’t call it a very wise one – that he struck out the other night, and which, it appears, you agreed to, about your granddaughter.” He paused, hoping that the peasant would speak, but the old man simply bent his two dark and piercing eyes on him, and nodded. Grenfell went on: “I have pointed out to him some, though very far from all, of the inconveniences of the scheme, and I have asked his leave to point them out to you, and from what he has told me of your good sense and clear-headedness, I suspect I shall not have undertaken my task in vain.”

“Does he mean that he wants to go back of it?” asked Malone, with a calm and resolute look.

“Listen to me patiently, and you shall hear all.” It is not necessary I should weary my reader with a sermon where the text conveys so much. The chief burden of Grenfell’s argument was what he had addressed to Vyner; and upon this he expanded freely, laying much stress on the misfortune that must accrue to any young girl raised to a temporary elevation, from which she must come down to meet a life of perhaps privation and hardship. He pictured an existence of luxury on the one hand, and of poverty on the other, and asked what right had any one to expose another to such extremes – what preparation could ease and indulgence be to a life of toil and suffering? “How were the acquirements of the one to be made applicable to the other? – how,” he asked, “is the young lady – for she will have become a young lady – to change at once to the condition of the ill-fed, ill-dressed, hard-worked country girl?”

Had the orator only glanced as he spoke at the features of the listener, he would have seen what a lamentable blunder his rhetoric had made. At the mention of the words “young lady,” the whole expression of the old man’s face altered; his half-sullen obduracy, his rugged sternness, disappeared, his eyes lighted up; his lips parted, his nostrils dilated, and his whole face beamed with a joy that was positively triumphant. “Go on, Sir! – go on!” he cried, as though he yearned for a perfect picture of what imagination had but sketched an outline.

“You cannot mean, my good man,” said Grenfell, hastily, “that you would think it any benefit to be placed where you couldn’t remain? – to stand at a height where you couldn’t balance yourself? It’s not enough that people can dress well, and talk well, and look well; they must have, besides, the means to do all these, day after day, without an effort, without as much as a care or a thought about them. Do you understand me?”

“Sure, people wasn’t born ladies and gentlemen from the beginnin’ of the world?”

“No; great families took their rise in great actions. Some by courage, some by cleverness, some by skill, and some by great industry.”

“Just so!” broke in the old man. “There was always some one to begin it, and likely enough too in a mighty small way. Dare I ax your honour a question?”

“Ask freely, my good fellow.”

“Though I suppose your honour will have to go back very far, can you tell me what was the first of your own great family?”

From the purpose-like energy of the old peasant’s manner, and the steady and penetrating look of his bright eyes, Grenfell felt certain that the man had been prompted to put this insult upon him, and in a voice broken by passion, he said:

“You’ll gain very little by insolence, old man! With my family you have nothing to do; they were in no wise connected with yours.”

“Be gorra! I knew it,” cried the peasant, slapping his thigh with his hand. “I’d have taken my oath of it. I was as sure of it as I was of my skin that you were not a born gentleman. You may be as rich as you please, and have houses, and lands, and cows, and hones, but there’s not a dhrop of the real blood in your body! I said it the first minute I looked at you, and I say it again.”

Pale and quivering with anger, Grenfell could not utter a word. The savage violence of the peasant came on him so much by surprise, that he was actually overwhelmed by it; and though he darted on the old fellow a look of fury, he turned away without speaking, and entered the house.

Vyner had just received tidings that Mr. M’Kinlay had arrived at Westport to await his instructions, and he was writing a honied line to despatch by the messenger, to say, that he would return there on the morrow, when Grenfell entered, and threw himself into a chair.

“I have met with ruffianism in most shapes, Vyner,” cried he, “but so insolent a scoundrel as that yonder never came across me before.”

“Insolent! Is it possible? What pretext could he have for insolence?”

“I know well, with your infatuation for these people, what a hopeless task it would be to persuade you that they were not miracles of good manners, as well as of loyalty and good conduct. I am quite prepared to hear that I mistook, or misunderstood – that, in short, what I fancied was insult was Irish naïveté.”

“But tell me what passed between you; what he said.”

“I will not.”

“Will you not let me judge of what you accuse him?”

“I will not; nay, more, I make it a charge upon you, as you desire our friendship to continue, that not only you never interrogate me on this matter, but that you neither question nor permit that man to be questioned upon it. Such a fellow should have as small a place in one’s memory as in one’s esteem, and I’d rather forget him.”

“Tell me, at least, what have you done in the negotiation?”

“Nothing. He opines that you have given him a pledge, to which as a gentleman you are bound, and as he sees neither peril nor inconvenience to result from converting a peasant child into a mock young lady, I suppose you have no choice, but must carry out your fine project with all the success it deserves.”

“I wish you would let me know what passed between you. If there was any intentional offence I’d certainly not overlook it.”

“I’ll tell you nothing.”

“Shall he ask your pardon?”

“‘He may; but he shall never have it.”

“You are provoking, George, I must say. You are not just to either of us; for certainly if I were convinced that you were aggrieved to the extent you suppose – ”

“I tell you once again, and for the last time, I will not discuss it; and as you have promised me not to open the matter with this fellow, it may be forgotten at once.”

“You really wish this?”

“I insist upon it.”

“That is sufficient.” Vyner took out his pocket-book, and walked to the door. “Malone,” cried he; and the old man came forward bareheaded and respectful, without a shade of passion on his face. “Malone, I am not so fully assured as I felt last night when I first proposed it, that my plan for your grandchild would be a wise one; at least, reflection has shown me some difficulties about it – ”

“Just tell me, Sir, do you want to draw back?” said the old man, resolutely, but respectfully.

“It would be better that you heard me out,” said Vyner, severely. “I am willing to do all that I offered – ”

“That will do, Sir. I never doubted the word of a real gentleman.”

“I was going to say, that if, instead of taking your child from you, you preferred that I should settle a certain sum of money on her, to be her marriage portion – ”

“No, Sir; no, Sir. What you offered or nothing. Make her a lady, as you said you would, or leave her where she is.”

“I think, my good man, you suffer your hot blood to get the better of your judgment occasionally, and it would be as well if you would give yourself some more time for reflection.”

“My blood is just as God gave it to me, neither hotter nor colder; and what I say now, I’d say to-morrow. Keep your word, or break it, whichever you plaze!”

“I can very well understand how my friend – ” Vyner stopped himself in time, and, after a second’s pause, proceeded: “You hold me, then, to my bargain?”

“How can I hould you? You may hould yourself, but I can’t hould you!”

Vyner’s cheek flushed, partly with anger, partly with shame, and he said: “With this you will buy what clothes your grandchild will require at present. Do not spend more of it than you like, for these things shall be looked to by others; and this will pay the cost of your journey. I have written down the way you are to go, and also the name and place of my house. My present intention is to be at home within a fortnight; but if you arrive before that, you will be equally welcome.”

“Very well, Sir,” said the old man, as he deposited the bank-notes in a leather purse. “I may go now?”

“Yes, you may go. Remember, however, Malone, that if between this and next Thursday week, you are inclined to think that my last offer is a better one – ”

“No fear of that, your honour!” broke in the old man, with a laugh. “I’m a poor man and an ignorant man, but I know what’s best for the stock I come from. It isn’t money we want. It’s the place where we can make money, and more than money;” and with a jerk of his frieze coat over his shoulder, the old fellow strode away down the valley.