Chapter II: New Ireland and Young England (1)

How glad I felt when morning came, as it brought me nearer to seeing our fair guest! I gathered a bouquet for her, wet with the kisses of the lingering night-dew. I flatter myself that my bouquets are constructed with a tender regard for tone. I have sat for hours in Paris, upon an upturned empty basket in the Marché aux Fleurs, watching the _fleuristes_ deftly composing those exquisite poems in color which serve to render flowers a charming necessity. Upon this occasion I selected blood-red geraniums as the outer edge, with narrowing circlets of stefanotis and mignonette, the whole enshrined in a bower of maiden-hair fern. How lovely she looked when I presented them to her at breakfast; how enchanting her transparent complexion, that flushed as she spoke, and crimsoned when she was spoken to! Alphonse Karr speaks of a similar indefinable charm in his own delightful way: “_Elle avait ce charme poétiquement virginal, qui est la plus grande beauté de la femme._” Alas! my bouquet had been forestalled by the gift of a veritable last rose of summer which Harry Welstone had culled while I was engaged in imparting some finishing touches to my rather bristly hair. The words “too late” to meet me on the very threshold of my new career! It was truly disheartening.

She was attired in a tightly-fitting dress of pure white, adorned by a series of coquettish blue ribbons, the edgings being of the same color. Her cavalier collar and gauntlet cuffs finished a toilette which almost recalled my Virgil, as I could hardly refrain from exclaiming “_O Dea certe!_”

“Might I ask, if it is not an unparliamentary question, Mr. Ormonde, at what hour you allowed poor papa to retire to his bed? Was it late last night or early this morning?” she asked with a droll archness.

“Well, it _was_ rather late, Miss Hawthorne; but as your father was good enough to favor me with some exceedingly interesting passages in his senatorial career, the time galloped by at a break-neck pace and we took no note of it.”

I had already learned to play the hypocrite. O Master Cupid! and this was thy first lesson.

“Is my memory mocking me, or did I hear awful mention of Irish whisky?” she laughed.

This enabled me to explain the blunder of my retainer in his desire to uphold the honor of the family, and to exonerate myself from the _soupçon_ of having neglected her society for that of the bottle. Peter’s ideas upon the family _status_ seemed to afford her the liveliest merriment, and she laughed the silvery laugh with which, old playgoers tell me, Mme. Vestris used to bring down the house.

“Peter is a character, then?”

“You will find that out before very long, Miss Hawthorne.”

“I do _so_ love characters!”

I ran over my characteristics like a flash, and found them of the baldest and mildest nature. Not a single strong point came to the rescue, not a liking or a disliking. Pah! what a dull, drowsy weed; what a prosy, colorless nobody.

“Peter is a great admirer of the fair sex,” said my mother. “You must see him on Sunday standing at the chapel gate ‘discoorsin’’ the pretty girls as they pass in to last Mass.”

“Is he a bachelor?”

“Oh! yes. I have often asked him why he doesn’t marry, and his invariable reply is, ‘I’d rayther keep looking at them.’”

“Perhaps I might have a chance,” said Miss Hawthorne, with a delicious coquetry in her manner.

“Not a bit of it, my dear; he would not ally himself to a Saxon for a crock of gold.”

“He is a hard-hearted wretch, then,” laughed our guest, “and I shall not endeavor to make a conquest.”

Little did she imagine that she might have uttered _Veni, vidi, vici_ at that particular moment. A poor triumph, though—a paltry victory. I did not feel myself worthy of powder and shot.

Harry Welstone kept gazing at Miss Hawthorne from out his supremely handsome eyes. How I envied him those deep, dark, corsair-like organs of vision, inwardly railing against my own heavy blues! He chatted with her upon every conceivable topic, planning excursions, arranging her boating, riding, walking, and even the songs she was to sing, disposing of her time to his own especial advantage, and leaving me helplessly out in the cold with the prosy member for Doodleshire. I could not find a solitary topic to speak upon; at least, just as I had summoned up courage to “cut in,” as they say at whist, the wind had shifted and the current of the conversation had taken another turn, leaving my disabled argosy high and dry. I had spent my most recent years in the secluded valley of Kilkenley with my mother, my horses, and my dogs. I had seen little or nothing of the whirl of the world, and was so purely, so essentially local as to be almost ignorant of what was going on in the outer circle of life. Of course I read the _Freeman’s Journal_—generally two days old when it reached us—and then I merely glanced at the hunting fixtures or the sales of thoroughbreds at Farrell’s or Sewell’s. Of course I had done some reading; and of a lighter kind the Waverley Novels and Dickens, the Titanic Thackeray and a few unwholesome French effusions; but of late I had read nothing, and, as a consequence, was local to a contemptuous degree. In what did Peter, my own servant, differ from me? Merely in the perusal of a few books. He was a better judge of a horse and—but why proceed? My reflections were all of this melancholy cast as I listened to dissertations upon Chopin, Schubert, and Wagner, upon the novelists and poets of the period, upon Gainsborough hats and Pompadour flounces, upon the relative merits of Rève d’Amour and Ess’ bouquet. Harry and our fair young guest kept the shuttlecock going between them, and I was forced to bear the burden of my own ignorance in a stolid, stupid silence. One chance was offered me which I took as I would a six-foot wall—flying. The question of horses came upon the _tapis_, and I vaulted into the saddle. I rode down Harry and scarcely spared Miss Hawthorne; nor did I draw rein until I had described _the_ run of last season, from meet to death, winding a “View-halloo!” that actually caused the teacups to ring upon their saucers. This blew off my compressed excitement, and, although very much ashamed, I felt all the better for it. My foot was on my native heath, and I showed _her_ that my name was McGregor.

“What are you going to do with Mr. Hawthorne to-day?” asked my mother.

“What are _you_ going to do with Miss Hawthorne, mother?” I retorted.

“Oh! Harry Welstone and I have arranged all that. _You_ are not in the baby-house.”

This was gratifying intelligence with a vengeance. I was told off as bear-leader to the prosy Parliament man, while Harry was to revel in the radiance of Miss Hawthorne’s presence. This was grilling. And yet what could I do or say? My hands were tied behind my back. I was host, and should pay deference to the respected rites of bread and salt, the sacred laws of hospitality. A sacrifice was demanded, and in me was found the victim.

“Could we not manage to unite our forces?” I suggested, in the faint, flickering hope that a compromise might be effected.

“Impossible!” said Harry.

I could have flung my teacup at his head.

“And why not, pray?” I asked in a short, testy way.

“Because you are to take Mr. Hawthorne over to Clonacooney, and to talk tenant-right and landlord-wrong with old Mr. Cassidy; then, when exhausted there, you are bound for the model farm at Rouserstown, and any amount of steam-ploughing and top-dressing; then you can pay a flying visit to Phil Dempsey’s hundred-acre field, and show the Saxon the richness of the land he has invaded; then you are to call for Father O’Dowd, where you can coal and do Home Rule; and then you may come home to dinner, where _we_ shall be very happy to receive you.” And Harry laughed loudly and long at my utter discomfiture—a discomfiture written in my rueful countenance in lines as heavy as those laid on the grim visage of Don Quixote by Gustave Doré.

“You are very kind, Welstone—a most considerate fellow. Why not have arranged for Knobber, or the other side of the Shannon—say Ballybawn, or Curlagh Island?”

The iron had entered my soul.

“Is not this arrangement a very heavy tax upon Mr. Ormonde’s good-nature?” exclaimed our fair guest, graciously coming to the rescue, addressing my mother, who, _par parenthèse_, expressed herself perfectly charmed with Miss Hawthorne.

“Tax! my dear child? On the contrary, it is just the sort of day my son will thoroughly enjoy: going about the country, talking second crops, turnips, and the price of hay and oats. He is devoted to all that sort of thing, and I doubt if even his duties of gallantry to you, Mabel, would get the better of his devotion to Mme. Ceres.”

I was about to blurt out something that might possibly have compromised me on all sides, when, as luck would have it, the M.P. entered.

He stalked into the room as if the division-bell were ringing, and took his seat as though below the gangway, bowing gravely to the assembled House. He lifted his cup as he would a blue-book, and handled his knife as an act of Parliament.

“You will—ahem!—I’m sure excuse my being a little late”—with a preparatory cough—“but the late sittings of last session have totally unfitted me for bed until the wee sma’ hours.”

“Surely, papa, you are not going to carry the House of Commons hours into the romantic glens of Kilkenly?”

“I admit that I ought not to do so, my dear, but, as a great statesman once observed—I, ahem! quite forget his name at this particular moment—habit is second nature; and were I to retire early, it would—ha! ha!—be only for the purpose of quarrelling with one of my best friends, my _best_ friend—Morpheus.”

“You must find the fatigues of Parliament very great,” said my mother.

“Herculean, madam. My correspondence, before I go down to the House at all, is a herculean task, and one in which I am very considerably aided by my daughter.”

“Oh! yes,” she laughed; “I can write such diplomatic letters as ‘I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication of the blank instant, which shall have my very best attention.’ Papa’s constituents invariably hear from me in that exact phraseology by return of post. I have a whole lot of such letters, as the Americans say, ‘on hand.’”

“If it were not for the off-nights, madam,” continued the member for Doodleshire, “Wednesdays and Saturdays, I should seriously think of accepting the Chiltern Hundreds, which is a gentlemanlike way of resigning a seat in the House.”

“And on the off-nights poor papa devotes himself to _me_,” exclaimed Mabel; “and I always accept invitations for those nights, so the only chance he has for sleep is during the recess.”

I wondered who her friends might be, what they were like, where they resided, and if the men were all in love with her. She had upon three distinct occasions referred to a Mr. Melton, and somehow the mention of this man filled me with a grim foreboding.

“We take too much sleep. We should do with as little as possible, and divide that by three. Sleep is waste of time. Sleep is a sad nuisance, a bore. It is born in a yawn and dies in imbecility,” cried Harry, suddenly bursting into vitality.

“Is it thus you would designate Nature’s soft nurse, sir?” demanded Mr. Hawthorne in a severe tone.

“This comes very badly from Mr. Welstone,” said my mother, “who requires to be called about ten times before he will deign to leave off sleeping.”

“You should see the panels of his door—actually worn away with knuckle-knocking,” I added.

“In the country I sleep because there’s nothing else to do. I get up early! What for? To see the same mist on the same mountains, and the same cows in the same field, and the same birds in the same trees; though, _mot d’honneur_, I was up and out this morning at eight o’clock, and played Romeo to Miss Hawthorne’s Juliet—at least, so far as a garden and a balcony could do it.”

“Who ever heard of a Romeo by daylight?” I exclaimed sarcastically.

“Let’s see what that love-stricken wretch does ‘neath the sun’s rays. We all know what he says and does in the pale moonlight.”

“He kills Tybalt,” I interposed, not utterly displeased in being able to show Mabel that I was on intimate terms with the Bard of Avon.

“And buys a penn’orth of strychnine,” added Harry with a grin.

“We know a gentleman who plays Romeo to perfection,” observed Mabel. “Such a handsome fellow! And the dress suits him charmingly.”

How I hated this Romeo!

“A Mr. Wynwood Melton.”

I knew it before she had uttered the words.

“An actor?” I drawled in a careless sort of way.

“Oh! dear, no; he’s in the Foreign Office, and a swell. He is nephew or cousin—I don’t know which—to Mr. Gladstone or some other great chief.” This with an animation that sent a thrill of despairing jealousy to my very soul.

“He is—ahem!—a very promising young man, a great favorite of ours, and will make his mark. He is destined for the House. You’ll meet him, Mr. Ormonde, when you come over. He is—ha! ha! ha!—rather a constant visitor,” with a significant glance in the direction of his daughter.

She flushed crimson. The deep scarlet glowed all over her like a rosy veil. That blush tolled the death-knell of my hopes. Our eyes met; she withdrew her glance, as I haughtily outstared her.

“He is a great favorite of papa’s,” she murmured, almost apologetically.

“And how about papa’s only daughter?” laughed my mother.

“Papa’s only daughter admires him very much—thinks him very handsome, very nice, very cultivated, very clever, _et voilà tout_.”

“What more would papa’s only daughter have?”

A quaint little shrug, and a dainty laugh.

“A thousand things,” she said. From that moment I marked down Melton as my foe—as the man who had dared to cross my path. Not that I hoped for success, or could ever hope for it; yet to him she had evidently surrendered her heart, and _he_ must reckon with _me_. Meet him! Rather! I would now accept the invitation to London for the sole purpose of falling foul of Melton. It would be such exquisite torture to see them together; such racking bliss to behold them pressing hands and looking into each other’s eyes. What pleasurable agony to look calmly on while those nameless frivolities and gentle dalliances by which lovers bridge the conventionalities were being performed beneath my very nose! Ha! ha! I would close with Mr. Hawthorne’s offer and make arrangements for proceeding to ‘town,’ as he would persist in calling the English metropolis, at the earliest possible opportunity consistent with his, and Melton’s, convenience.

“Miss Hawthorne,” suddenly exclaimed Harry, “_do_ tell us something more about this Romeo. You have only given us enough to make us wish for more. What is he like?”

“Will you have his portrait in oil or a twopenny photo?” she laughed.

“Let us strike ‘ile’ by all means.”

“_Imprimis_—that’s a good word to begin with—he is tall.”

“Good!”

“Graceful.”

“Good again!”

“Dignified-looking.”

“_Bravissimo!_”

“Parts his hair in the centre.”

“I don’t care for that,” said Harry.

“It becomes _him_.”

“Possibly. Pray proceed. His eyes?”

“Gray.”

“Nose?”

“Aquiline.”

“Beard?—men parting their hair in the centre wear beards.”

“Henri Quatre.”

“Hands?”

“Small and white.”

I threw a hasty glance at mine; they were of the same hue as the leg of the mahogany breakfast-table at which we were seated. Sun and saddle had done their work effectually.

“Does he smile?”

“Why, _of course_ he does.”

“Now,” said Harry, “upon your description of his smile a good deal may depend.”

“I object to this line of cross-examination,” said my mother.

“I consider the subject has been sufficiently thrashed already,” I added. Truly, I was sick of it.

“I shall throw up my brief, if I do not get an answer to my question.”

“I shall tell you by and by, Mr. Welstone.”

“By and by will not do.”

“Well, then, Mr. Melton’s smile is like a sunbeam. Are you satisfied _now_?”

“Mr. Hawthorne,” said Harry, turning to the M.P., “this is a very bad case.”

“I’m afraid—ha! ha! ha!—that it looks somewhat suspicious,” was the significant reply.

“If you mean—” Mabel began.

“I don’t mean what _you_ mean,” laughed Harry.

“What _do_ you mean?” she asked.

“What do _you_ mean?” he playfully retorted.

At this juncture Peter O’Brien’s shock head appeared at the open window, through which he unceremoniously thrust it, announcing, in no very delicate accents:

“The yokes is _con_vaynient.”

“That’s a fine morning, Peter,” exclaimed Miss Hawthorne, rising and approaching the window.

“Troth, it’s that same, miss, glory be to God! It’s iligant weather intirely for the craps.”

“We’ve cut all our corn in England, Peter.”

“See that, now,” gloomily; but, brightening up, he added: “Sorra a haporth to hindher _us_ from cuttin’ it long ago, av it was only ripe enough.”

“An Irish peasant will never admit Saxon superiority in anything,” said my mother, placing her arm about Mabel’s waist. “What ‘yokes’ have you out to-day, Peter?”

“The shay for you, ma’am, and the young leddy there; though I’m afeared it’s not as nate as it ought for to be, be raisin av a rogue av a hin—a red wan, full av consait an’ impidence—makin’ her nest right—”

“Here, Peter,” I cried, to put a stop to these hideous revelations, “get my car round at once.” I could have strangled him.

As all English visitors to Ireland are possessed of a frantic desire to experience the jolting of an Irish jaunting-car, I ordered my own special conveyance round, also from the workshop of Bates—a low, rakish-looking craft, with a very deep well for the dogs when going out shooting, and bright yellow corduroy cushions; an idea of my own, and upon which I rather piqued myself. Harry Welstone and the ladies came to the doorsteps to see us off, and while he explained the beauties of the chariot to Miss Hawthorne I endeavored to initiate her father into the mysteries of clinging on, advising him not to clutch the front and back rail so convulsively, but rather to allow his body to swing with every motion of the vehicle, and above all things to trust to luck.

“Lave yourself as if ye wor a sack o’ male, sir,” suggested Peter, who was charioteer, “or as if ye had a sup in. Sorra a man that was full ever dhropped off av a car, barrin’ Murty Flinn; an’ shure that was not his fault aither, for it was intirely be raisin av a bargain he med wud a lump av a mare he was dhrivin’ at that time.”

“Who was Murty Flinn, Peter?” asked Miss Hawthorne.

“A dacent boy, miss, that lives beyant at the crass-roads—a rale hayro for sperits,” was the prompt response, accompanied by a semi-military salute.

“And how did he fall off the car?”

“Troth, thin, _mavourneen_, it wasn’t Murty that fell aff av the car, so much as that the car fell aff av Murty; an’ this is how it happened: Murty was comin’ from the fair av Bohernacopple, where he wint for to sell a little slip av a calf, an’ afore he left the fair he tuk several gollioges av sperits, an’ had a cupple uv haits wud Phil Clancy, the red-hedded wan—not Phil av Tubbermory—an’ he was bet up intirely betune the whiskey an’ the rounds wud red Clancy, so that whin he cum for to make for home he was hard set for to yoke the mare, an’ harder set agin for to mount to his sate on the car. But Murty is the persevarionist man ye ever laid yer two purty eyes on, miss, an’ he ruz himself into the sate afther a tremendjus battle; and th’ ould mare, whin she seen that he was comfortable, tuk the road like a Christian mare. Well, Murty rowled backwards an’ forwards, an’ every joult av the car ye’d think wud sind him on the crown av his _caubeen_; but, be me song, he was as secure as a prisner in Botany Bay, an’ it’s a sailor he thought he was, up in a hammock no less. Well, miss, the night was a little dark an’ the road was shaded wud threes, an’ whin they cum to th’ ould graveyard at Killencanick never a fut the mare ‘ud go farther.

“‘What’s the matther wud ye?’ axed Murty; but sorra an answer she med him.

“‘Are ye bet,’ sez he, ‘an’ you so far from home?’ She riz a cupple av kicks, as much as to say, ‘Ye hit it off that time, anyhow, Misther Flinn!’

“‘Did ye get a dhrink at the fair beyant, Moria?’—the little mare’s name, miss. She shuk her hed in a way that tould him that she was as dhry as a cuckoo.

“‘Musha, musha, but that was cruel thratemint,’ sez he. ‘What’s to be done at all, at all?’

“Well, miss, he thought for a minit, an’ he sez: ‘Moria, we’re only two mile from the Cock an’ Blackberry, an’ I’ll tell ye what I’ll do wud ye: you carry me wan mile, sez he, ‘an’ I’ll carry you th’ other.’”

This proposition on the part of Murty Flinn was received with a peal of ringing laughter from Miss Hawthorne, who, with flashing eyes and an eager expression of delighted curiosity, begged of Peter to proceed.

“Av coorse, miss,” replied the gratified Jehu. “Well, ye see the words was hardly acrass his mouth whin, cockin’ her ears an’ her tail, th’ ould mare darted aff as if she was runnin’ for the Cunningham Coop at Punchestown, an’ Murty swingin’ like a log round a dog’s neck all the voyage; an’ the minnit she come to the milestone undher Headford demesne she stopped like a dead rabbit.

“‘Where are we now?’ axed Murty.

“She sed nothin’, but rouled the car up to the milestone an’ grazed it wud the step.

“‘Well, yer the cutest little crayture,’ sez Murty, ‘that ever wore shoes,’ sez he; ‘an’, be the powers, as ye kept yer word wud me, I’ll keep me word wud you.’ And he rouled aff av the car into the middle o’ the road, while th’ ould mare unyoked herself as aisy as if it was aitin’ hay she was insted av undoin’ buckles that riz many a blisther on Murty’s fingers; for the harness was _con_trairy, and more betoken as rusty as a Hessian’s baggonet. When Murty seen the mare stannin’ naked in the road, he med an offer for to get up, but he was bet intirely be raisin av the sup he tuk, an’ he cudn’t stir more nor his arms; but the ould mare wasn’t goin’ for to be done out av her jaunt in that way, so she cum over, an’ sazin’ him—savin’ yer presence, miss—be the sate av his small-clothes, riz him to his feet, an’, wud a cupple av twists, dhruv him betune the shafts av the car, an’ in a brace av shakes had him harnessed like a racer.

“‘I’m reddy now, ma’am,’ sez Murty, mighty polite, for he seen the whip in one av her forepaws—‘I’m reddy now, ma’am; so up wud ye, an’ I’ll go bail we’ll not be long coverin’ the road betune this an’ the Cock an’ Blackberry.’

“Well, miss, th’ ould mare mounted the car, an’ Murty started aff as well as he cud; but he was bet up afther runnin’ a few yards, an’ he dhropped into a walk, but no sooner he done it than he got a welt av the whip that med him hop.

“‘What are ye doin?’ sez he, an’ down cums the lash agin be way av an answer.

“‘How dare ye raise yer hand to a Christian?’ sez he. A cupple av welts follied this.

“‘I’ll not stan’ it!’ he bawled; but the more he roared an’ bawled the heavier th’ ould mare welted, an’ he might as well be spakin’ to the Rock o’ Cashel.

“‘Hould yer hand!’ he roared, thryin to soothe her—‘hould yer hand, an’ ye’ll have a bellyful av the finest oats in the barony—ould Tim Collins’ best crap. Dhrop the whip, an’ sorra a taste av work ye’ll do till next Michaelmas. I can’t thravel faster, Moria, be raisin av a corn,’ and the like; but the mare had him, an’ she ped off ould scores, an’ be the time they kem to the Cock an’ Blackberry poor Murty was bet like an ould carpet, an’ he wasn’t fit for to frighten the crows out av an oat-field. An’ that’s how it all happened, miss.”

“And did he give Moria the drink?” asked Miss Hawthorne.

“He sez he did,” replied Peter, with a peculiar grin; “but the people that owns the public-house sez that he niver darkened their doore, an’ that he was found lying undher the yoke near the crass-roads, wud th’ ould mare grazin’ about a half a mile down the road. But it’s a thrue story,” he added with somewhat of solemn emphasis.

“_Si non e vero e ben trovato_,” laughed our guest, as she waved us a graceful adieu.

It was one of those lovely mornings nowhere to be found but in Ireland: the dim, half-gray light, the heavily-perfumed air, the stillness that imparted a sort of sad solemnity to the scene, the glorious tints of green on hill and hollow that mellowed themselves with the sombre sky, a something that inspires a silence that is at once a resource and a regret. I became wrapped up in my own thoughts—so much so that, although I held the “ribbons” I was scarcely aware of the fact, and it was only the exclamation from Peter: “Blur an’ ages! Masther Fred, luk out for the brudge”—a narrow structure, across which it was possible to pass without grazing the parapet walls, and nothing more—that brought me to my senses. My guest, in spite of the earnest instructions of Peter, was clinging frantically to the rails at either end of the seat, and, instead of allowing his body to swing with the motion of the vehicle, was endeavoring to sit bolt upright, as though he were in the House of Commons and in anxious expectation of catching the Speaker’s eye. Upon arriving at the foot of Ballymacrow hill Peter sprang to the ground—an example followed by myself; but Mr. Hawthorne retained his seat, as there was plenty of walking in store for him, and my horse could well endure the weight of one, when the weight of three would make a very essential difference in so steep a climb.

Peter, reins in hand, walked beside the “mimber,” and in a few minutes was engaged in “discoorsin’” him.

“Home Rule? Sorra a wan o’ me cares a thraneen for it, thin.”

“What is a thraneen?” asked Mr. Hawthorne, eager for information all along the line.

“A thraneen is what the boys reddies their dhudeens wud,” was the response to the query.

“I am still in ignorance.”

“Wisha, wisha! an’ this is a mimber av Parliamint,” muttered Peter, “an’ he doesn’t know what a thraneen manes, an’ the littlest gossoon out av Father Finnerty’s school beyant cud tell him”; adding aloud: “A thraneen is a blade av grass that sheeps nor cows won’t ait, an’ it sticks up in a field; there’s wan,” suiting the action to the word, plucking it from a bank on the side of the road, and presenting it to the member for Doodleshire.

“And so you are not a Home-Ruler, my man?”

“Sorra a bit, sir.”

“Then what are you?”

“I am a repayler. I’m for teetotal separation; that’s what Dan O’Connell sed to Drizzlyeye.”

“What did Mr. O’Connell say to Mr. Disraeli?” asked my guest in very Parliamentary phraseology.

“I’ll tell ye. ‘What is it yez want at all, at all, over beyant in Hibernium?’ sez Drizzlyeye. ‘Yez are always wantin’ somethin,’ sez he, ‘an’ what the dickens do yez want now?’

“‘I’ll tell ye what we want,’ says Dan, as bould as a ram.

“‘What is it, Dan?’ sez Drizzlyeye.

“‘We want teetotal separation,’ sez Dan.

“‘Arrah, ge lang ou’ a that,’ sez Drizzlyeye. ‘Yez cudn’t get along wudout us,’ sez he.

“‘Cudn’t we?’ sez Dan. ‘Thry us, Drizzlyeye,’ sez he. ‘How did we get on afore?’

“‘Bad enuff,’ sez Drizzlyeye—‘bad enuff, Dan. Yez were always batin’ aich other and divartin’ yerselves, and, barrin’ the weltin’ Brian Boru gev the Danes at Clontarf, bad cess to the haporth yez ever done, Dan. England is yer best frind. We always play fair,’ sez he.

“‘How dar ye say that to me?’ sez Dan, takin’ the Traity av Limerick out av his pocketbuke. ‘Luk at that documint,’ sez he, firin’ up; ‘there’s some av yer dirty work; an’ I ax ye square an’ fair,’ sez Dan, in a hait, for he was riz, ‘if the brakin’ av that wasn’t as bad as anything yer notorious ancesthor ever done?’ alludin’ to Drizzlyeye’s ancesthor, the impenitint thief.

“‘That’s none of my doin’, Dan,’ sez Drizzlyeye, turnin’ white as a banshee.

“‘I know it’s not,’ sez Dan; ‘but ye’d do it to-morrow mornin’,’ sez he, ‘an’ that’s why I demand the repale an’ a teetotal separation.’

“‘Begorra, but I think yer right, Dan,’ sez Drizzlyeye.”

“Such an interview could not possibly have occurred,” observed the practical Englishman.

“Cudn’t it?” with an indignant toss of the head. “I had it from Lanty Finnegan, who heerd it from the bishop’s own body-man.” And Peter, giving the horse a lash of the whip, dashed into the laurestine-bordered avenue leading up to the cosey cottage wherein resided the “darlintest priest outside av Room,” Father Myles O’Dowd.

Father O’Dowd’s residence was a long, single-storied house, whitewashed to a dazzling whiteness, and thatched with straw the color of the amber wept by the sorrowing seabird. A border of blood-red geraniums ran along the entire _façade_, and the gable ends were embowered in honeysuckle and clematis. A rustic porch entwined with Virginia creeper jealously guarded the entrance, boldly backed up by the “iligantest ratter in the barony” in the shape of a bandy-legged terrier, who winked a sort of facetious welcome at Peter and bestowed a cough-like bark of recognition upon me. The parlor was a genuine snuggery, “papered with books,” all of which, from St. Thomas of Aquinas to Father Perrone, were of the rarest and choicest theological reading. Nor were the secular authors left out in the cold, to which the well-thumbed volumes of the Waverley Novels and the immortal _facetiæ_ of Dickens bore ample testimony. A charming copy of Raphael’s masterpiece stood opposite the door, the glorious eyes of the Virgin Mother lighting the apartment with a soft and holy radiance, while the fresh and rosy flesh-tints of the divine Infant bespoke the workmanship as being that of a _maestro_. A portrait of Henry Grattan hung over the chimney-piece, and facing it, between the windows, a print of the review of the volunteers in College Green, while some dozen valuable engravings, all of a sacred character, adorned the walls in graceful profusion. A statuette of the Holy Father occupied a niche specially prepared for it, and an old brass-bound rosewood bureau, black as ebony from age, sternly asserted itself in defiance of a hustling crowd of horse-hair-seated chairs; a shining sofa a little the worse for the wear, and presenting a series of comfortless ridges to the unwary sitter, and a genuine Domingo mahogany table bearing an honest corned beef and cabbage and “boiled leg with” completed a picture that was at once refreshing and invigorating to behold.

“Shure he’s only acrass the bog, Masther Fred,” exclaimed Biddy Finnegan, the housekeeper, with a joyous smile illuminating the very frills of her old-world white cap, “an’ I’ll send wan av the boys for him. He’d be sore an’ sorry for to miss ye, sir. An’ how’s the misthress—God be good to her!—an’ the major, whin ye heerd av him? It’s himself that’s kindly and dhroll.” And Biddy, dusting the sofa, requested the member for Doodleshire to take a “sate.”

“Won’t ye have a sup o’ somethin’ afther yer jaunt, Masther Fred, or this gintleman? Och! but here’s himself now.”

Father O’Dowd had been attached to Imogeela since his ordination—a period of thirty years, during twenty-five of which he was its devoted parish priest. Respectfully declining the promotion in the church which his piety, erudition, and talents claimed for him as their natural heritage, he clung with paternal fondness to his little parish, ministering to the spiritual wants of his flock with an earnest and holy watchfulness that was repaid to the uttermost by a childlike and truthful obedience. To his parishioners he was all, everything—guide, philosopher, friend. He shared their joys and their sorrows, their hopes and their fears. He whispered hope when the sky was overcast, urging moderation when the sun was at its brightest. He had christened every child and married every adult in the parish; and those, alas! so many, lying beneath the green grass in the churchyard of Imogeela had been soothed to their long, long rest by the words of heavenly consolation from his pious lips. Ever at his post, the cold, bleak nights of winter would find him wending his way through rugged mountain-passes, fording swollen streams, or wading treacherous bogs to attend to the wants of the sick and dying, while a granite boulder or the stump of a felled tree, the blue canopy of heaven overhead, has upon many memorable occasions constituted his confessional. A profound scholar, a finished gentleman, and, despite his surroundings, a good deal a man of the world, I was proud, exceedingly proud, to be enabled to present to Mr. Hawthorne so true a specimen of that order which Lord John Russell had been pleased to describe as “surpliced ruffians.”

The priest entered, a smile illuminating his expressive face like a ray of sunlight. Stretching forth both hands, he bade me welcome, exclaiming: “Ah! you have made your pilgrimage at last; you come, as old Horace hath it, _inter silvas Academi quærere verum_. How is your excellent mother? I received your joint epistle, and I hope you got my promissory note, due almost at sight.”

Father O’Dowd was about fifty-five or fifty-six; hale, handsome, and muscular; his silken, snow-white hair and ruddy complexion, with his lustrous, dark blue eyes and glittering teeth, giving him an air of genial cordiality pronounceable at a single glance. Tall, sunburnt, and powerfully built, he carried that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked in muscular Christianity. I saw with feelings of intense pleasure that my guest was both pleased and impressed—an impression strengthened by the cordial greeting which the worthy priest extended to him.

“Welcome to Ireland, Mr. Hawthorne. It’s about the best thing Strongbow ever did for me—the pleasure of seeing a friend of my dear young friend’s here. Collectively you Saxons hate us; individually you find us not quite the lawless savages the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Spectator_ would make us.”

“We want to know you better,” said the M.P.

“Ah! that’s the rub. You don’t know us, and never will know us; but _we_ know _you_. Englishmen come over to Ireland, believing that a real knowledge of the country is not to be acquired from newspapers, but that a man must see Ireland for himself. They come; they go; and all they pick up is a little of our brogue. We never can hope for much more than what Lucan calls _concordia discors_.”

“I believe if Ireland were to take the same stand as Scotland—”

“Scotland me no Scotland,” laughed Father O’Dowd.

“Scotland is contented and thrifty.”

“And Ireland is poor and proud. I tell you, Mr. Hawthorne, that we have a big bill of indictment against you that I fear may never be settled in _my_ day. Why should not Scotland be contented? Is she not fed on sugar-plums? Is there not a sandy-haired Scotchman in every position worth having, from the cabinet to the custom-house? Do you not develop all her industries, and pat her on the back like a spoiled child? Are not your royal family _ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores_, or, if I freely translate myself, more Scotch than the Scotch themselves? Why should she not be contented and prosperous when she gets everything she asks for?”

“But you ask too much, reverend sir.”

“It is scarcely asking too much to ask for one’s own.”

“Surely yours are at best but—ahem!—sentimental grievances, and the House makes every—ahem!—effort at conciliation.”

“We can stand hard knocks and square fighting, and possibly feel all the better for it; but when you speak of conciliation and all that sort of thing we get on our edge at once, as we know that we are going to be bamboozled.”

“But surely you will admit that we have done a good deal for the country. See the Church Disestablishment Act and the Land Act.”

“Only two patches on our ragged coats, my dear sir. We want independence, and that you won’t give us; nor will you offer us a _quid pro quo_, as you did with Scotland, because you know we would not accept it. No, Mr. Hawthorne, we’ll have to fight you for this, and our Irish members must do the Mrs. Caudle for John Bull, and give him sleepless and wretched nights in the big house at St. Stephen’s.”

“Have you any fault to find with the administration of the laws?”

“Fault! When we find ourselves gagged and fettered by a miserably weak administration, and hedged in by a set of uncertain and floating laws, we begin to think about righting ourselves. You send us a lord-lieutenant who knows as much about Ireland as he does of Bungaroo—who comes over with a hazy idea that there’s some one to be conciliated and some one to be hanged; a chief-secretary who knows less; an attorney-general who, if active, means a necessity for strengthening the garrison; and a commander of the forces who pants for a chance of manœuvring his flying columns over our prostrate bodies. But here comes Biddy Finnegan with a cutlet of mountain mutton, and I can give you a drop of the real mountain dew that never paid the Saxon gauger a farthing duty—or, at least, if we had our rights, ought not, according to Peter O’Brien.” And he laughed. “These subjects are much better worth discussing than English misrule. _Quantum est in rebus inane._” And ushering Mr. Hawthorne to a seat upon his right hand, he proceeded to do the honors with a courtly grace blended with a fascinating hospitality.

“That _poteen_ has its story. As I have already told you, it never paid duty. A friend of mine was anxious that I should keep it on tap, as he constantly comes this way. It is somewhat difficult to obtain it now, as the excise officers are, like you members of Parliament, particularly wide awake.” The M.P. bowed solemnly in recognition of the compliment. “At last, however, he managed to drop on a man, who knew another man, who knew another man, in whose cabin this particular crayture was to be found. My friend ferreted him out, and, upon asking the price per gallon, was informed by the manufacturer that he would only charge _him_ eighteen shillings.

“‘Eighteen shillings!’ exclaimed my friend. ‘Why, that’s an enormous price.’

“‘Och! shure,’ replied the other, with a droll look perfectly indescribable, ‘I cudn’t part it for less, _as the duty’s riz_.’”

It took a considerable time to drive the point of Father O’Dowd’s fictitious narrative and the illicit distiller’s rejoinder into the head of the member for Doodleshire; and when he did manage to grapple it, wishing to lay it by in order to retail it in the House, it was found impossible to get him completely round it, as the word “riz” invariably balked him, and it is scarcely necessary to observe that his Anglican substitution failed in every way to improve the story. The cutlets were deliciously tender, and the potatoes in their jackets so mealy and inviting that the Saxon fell to with a vigor that fairly astonished me. As dish after dish of the diminutive shies disappeared, and potato after potato left its jacket in shreds behind it, I congratulated myself upon the signal success of this visit.

“My drive gave me an appetite, father,” he said. “I haven’t eaten luncheon for many months. In the House I generally pair off with some friend to a biscuit and a glass of sherry; but here I have—ahem!—eaten like a navvy.”

“I’m delighted to hear you mention the drive as the cause of the appetite; for I must endeavor to induce you to repeat it and help me to eat a saddle of mutton that will be fit for Lucullus on Thursday.”

“I am in Mr. Ormonde’s hands.”

I was in an agony—another day from Mabel!

“Oh! Ormonde will do as I direct him; and I’ll tell you what we must conspire about to-night—to induce the ladies to drive over. I should be very pleased to show Miss Hawthorne a little this side of the county.”

I breathed again.

“You shall have my vote,” said the M.P.; “and, if I might dare suggest an amendment to the saddle, it would be in ‘chops.’”

“We might do the swell thing,” laughed the _padre_, “and have two dishes—an _entrée_; how magnificently that sounds! In any case I can say with Horace:

“Hinc tibi copia
Manabit ad plenum, benigno
Ruris bonorum opulenta cornu.”

“I have—ahem!—almost forgotten my Horace,” sighed our guest.

“One might say to you, as was said to the non-whist-player, What an unhappy old age you are laying up for yourself, Mr. Hawthorne!”

“Well, reverend sir, so long as a man has the _Times_ he can defy _ennui_; every leader is an essay.”

“You cannot commit the _Times_ to memory.”

“I read it every day, sir,” was the pompous reply.

“Apropos of the _Times_, they tell a story of Chief-Baron Pigott which is eminently characteristic. He is one of the most scrupulous, painstaking men the world ever saw, who, sooner than do a criminal injustice, would go over evidence _ad nauseam_ and weigh the _pros_ and _cons_, driving the bar nearly to distraction. One day a friend found him upon the steps of his house superintending the removal of a huge pile of newspapers.

“‘What papers are those, Chief-Baron?’ he asked.

“‘The London _Times_.’

“‘Do you read the _Times_ regularly?’

“‘Oh! dear, yes.’

“‘Did you read that slashing leader on Bright’s speech?’

“‘No; when did it appear?’

“‘Last Thursday.’

“‘Oh! my dear friend, I shall come to it by and by; but at present I am _a year in arrear_.’”

“Am I to understand that he intended to read up to that speech?”

“Certainly. This will illustrate the man. At his house in Leeson Street, Dublin, the hall-door was divided into two, and a knocker attached to each door. The chief-baron has been known to stand for hours, pausing to consider which knocker he would rap with, fearing to act unjustly by the unutilized one.”

“I can scarcely credit this,” exclaimed the member.

“Oh! you’ll hear of stranger things than that before you leave Ireland.” And the merry twinkle in the priest’s eye dissipated any doubts still lingering in the ponderous mind of the learned member for Doodleshire.

“That story is worthy of our—ahem!—charioteer.”

“Who? Peter O’Brien? What good company the rascal is! Of him one can safely say with Publius, _Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est_. Peter would lighten any journey. What was the subject of the debate to-day?”

“Well—ahem!—he gave us a new and original version of _A Strange Adventure with a Phaeton_.” And the little man chuckled at his wit.

“I know the story,” said Father O’Dowd. “It is one of Peter’s favorites, and it takes Peter to tell it.”

“From the phaeton he plunged into Home Rule.”

“Freddy,” addressing me, “you must get Peter to tell our English friend here the story of how ‘ould Casey done Dochther Huttle out av a guinea’; it’s racy of the soil.”

“There are—ahem!—some words of his that I cannot exactly follow. They are Irish, but they have quite a Saxon ring about them, which evidently shows the affinity in the languages.”

“And a further reason for uniting us. You English will never rest content until a causeway is built between Kingstown and Holyhead, garrisoned for the whole sixty miles by a Yorkshire or Shropshire regiment—one that can be depended upon.”

“That idea has been mooted in the House before now; I mean the—ahem!—connection of the two countries by a tunnel.”

“So you would bind us in the dark, Mr. Hawthorne?”

“Ha! ha! ha! Father O’Dowd, that is so good that I must book it here,” tapping his forehead in a ghastly way. “Don’t be surprised if it is heard in the House. We are very witty there.”

“If there is any wit in the House of Commons we send it to you. But I doubt if there is a sparkle of repartee among all the Irish members even. I’ve seen a French _mot_ rehashed, with the epigram left out in the cold, and an Irish story with the point striking somewhere in Tipperary.”

“Tipperary is very Irish, is it not? They speak the Irish language there, and run their vowels into each other.”

“You are right, sir; that is the place where you’d get your two _i_’s knocked into one.”

Mr. Hawthorne saw this, and, although the laugh was against him, enjoyed it amazingly. Father O’Dowd could hit from the shoulder, but could also pick up his prostrate foe with the delicacy of a woman. When creed or country came up, one found a stalwart champion in the worthy priest, who could meet his adversary with shillelah or polished steel, as the requirements of the case demanded.

“Finish that glass of wine, and let me show you a set of the finest boneens in the county.”

“Boneens? What are boneens?”

“This is more of your Saxon ignorance,” laughed Father O’Dowd, as, followed by Mr. Hawthorne and myself, he led the way in the direction of the stable-yard.

TO BE CONTINUED.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OUTSIDE ST. PETER’S.

How grand the approach! The dome’s Olympian disc
Albeit has sunk behind the huge façade.
Lo! with its cross the sentinel obelisk
Salutes as on parade.

“Hewn from the red heart of primeval granite,”
It says, “among the monuments which man
Reared to outmass the mountains of his planet,
I was, ere Rome began.

“By no dark hieroglyphs my sides are storied;
My titular god, in Heliopolis,
In the world’s morning burned into my forehead
The signet of his kiss.

“Converted like an ancient scroll rewritten,
What heeds the Sun of Righteousness my date?
I lift his symbol on my brow, dawn-smitten,
And at his portal wait!”

And the twin fountains leap in joy, and twist
Their silvery shafts in foaming strength amain,
Whose loosening coil is whirled into a mist
Of sun-illumined rain.

Therein the bow of promise tenderly,
A Heart in glory, palpitates and glows;
And musically, in words of melody,
The crystal cadence flows:

“Ho! fallen ones, Eve’s sorrowing sons and daughters!
In our lustration nothing is accurst;
Ho! come ye, come ye to the living waters,
Whoever is athirst.”

The colonnaded, stately double-porch
For world-wide wanderers stretches arms of grace;
The bosom of the universal church
Draws us to her embrace.

In their white silence the apostles look
Benignantly upon us. Waving hands
Of welcome—if our tears such vision brook—
In midst the Master stands.

“Humanity,” he pleadeth, “heavy laden,
Come unto me, and I will give you rest!
Through this, my portal, to the nobler Eden
Enter, and be possessed!”

’Tis Easter; and they sing the risen Christ—
How jubilant St. Peter’s wondrous choir!
But now no vision of the Evangelist,
Preceding throne and tiar,

Is borne amid the mystic candlesticks;
No waving feathers flash with starry eyes;
In the gold chalice and the gold-rayed pyx,
For paschal sacrifice,

No pontiff consecrates the elements;
And dost remember, in the olden time,
How heaven was stormed with silver violence—
That trumpet-burst sublime,

Like cherubim in battle? Or, all sound
Tranced for the elevation of the Host,
How tingling silence thrilled through worlds profound,
Where moved the Holy Ghost,

And then Rome rocked with bells? If such things were,
They are not now. But we are strangely wrought
And vibrant, answering like a harp in air
The impalpable wind of thought.

O’er the Campagna’s wastes of feverous blight
I’ve watched St. Peter’s mighty dome expand
In soaring cycloids to the infinite,
When heaven was blue and bland.

When storm was on the mountains and the sea,
Have seen its whole empyreal glory tost
Like shipwreck on a wild immensity,
That heaved without a coast.

But it was grand through all. From far or near,
It seemed too vast for heresies or schisms;
No colored glass, within its hemisphere,
Breaks white light as with prisms.

I have dreamed dreams therein: of charity
Wide as the world, impartial as the sun;
That on such Sion, in fraternity,
Might all men meet as one.

Dreams! Yet one cross, one hope—we scarce can err—
May, must all wanderers to one fold recall:
The Apostles’ Creed, the bunch of precious myrrh,
Can purify us all.

“I have builded on a rock!” His word symbolic
He will make plain—the Eternal cannot fail:
“Earth shall not shake my One Church Apostolic,
Nor gates of hell prevail!”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FRENCH HOME LIFE.[178]

Philosophers, theologians, and political economists alike are agreed that the family is the basis of society and the type of government. Home life and teaching, therefore, is the most important thing in youth, and of whatsoever kind it is, so will be the behavior in riper years of the generation brought up in its precepts. If parents did their duty, the state would need fewer prisons; or, as a Chinese proverb more tersely puts it, “If parents would buy rods, the hangman would sell his implements.” Individual effort, however heroically it may make head against the stream, has but a hard and uncertain task in an atmosphere the very reverse of Christian and Scriptural, and in the teeth of laws becoming every day more and more antagonistic to the Ten Commandments. Still, since the spirit of the age has almost put on one side, as obsolete, the ideal of reverence for age and experience, and the respect due to parents, husbands, masters, and superiors, the preservation of the worthy traditions of Christian home-life falls necessarily to the hands of families themselves. We have to live not up to or within the laws, but beyond them, and to train our children not only as good and obedient citizens but as earnest and practical Christians. Not only in one country is this the case, nor even among the countries of one race, but everywhere, from modernized Japan to Spain, from Russia to the reservations of friendly Indians.

There is one country, however, whose modern literature and practice for a century and a half has been a synonym for looseness of teaching, for disregard of family ties, honor, authority, and restraint, for every element brilliantly and fatally disintegrating, for every moral and philosophical novelty. France is perhaps the nation most misrepresented and maligned by her public literature—at least the France whose delinquencies have been so shamelessly and with seeming enjoyment dissected before our eyes by her novelists and satirists. The sound body on whose surface these sores break out is ignored; the old tradition, rigid and artificial in many points, but made so by the very license of court and city which for ever assaulted its simplicity, is overlooked, and the decent, quiet, and strong substratum of manliness, truth, and purity underlying the froth of vice in the capital and the large towns is forgotten.