Chapter III: Captain Leopold Introduces His Friend (4)

Such were the philosophers with whom St. Paul disputed every day in the market-place of Athens. The doctrines of the Stoics at least were not new to him; for Tarsus in Cilicia, where Saul was born and educated, was a great centre of Stoic philosophy, and from his youth up he must have been more or less familiar with the salient points of the Stoic system. The “Painted Porch,” the headquarters of the Stoics in Athens, was situated in the Agora, and the Garden of the Epicureans was close at hand, so that in the market-place St. Paul was in the midst of the rival sects of philosophers—in fact, on the battle-ground. We can have little doubt of the kind of reception the Epicureans would give him. It was a part of their system to make light of everything, and to treat nothing seriously except their dinners. He spoke to them about “Jesus and the resurrection.” Of course they called him a “word-sower” or a “babbler,” though Renan will have it that they called St. Paul a “babbler” because he spoke bad Greek. The Stoics were grave men, however, and they gave him a respectful hearing. He knew the current of their thoughts and how to address himself to them; and his doctrines must have excited their curiosity, if not their interest. They it was, doubtless, who invited him to the Areopagus, the supreme tribunal, where every important question in religion, law, and philosophy was heard and pronounced upon. It was an exceedingly great mark of respect for St. Paul and his opinions that he should be invited from the vulgar discussions of the Agora to speak before the most ancient and most august assembly of Greece; it shows the impression he must have made by his learning and eloquence on the cultivated men of Athens, and it is a proof that after all St. Paul must have spoken pretty good Greek. The Areopagus, or “Council of Twelve,” was a tribunal set up in the earliest days of Grecian autonomy to try capital offences. Solon, 600 B.C., made it a sort of high council of state and bestowed upon it the power of veto. Only men of unblemished reputation, who had rendered signal services to their country, were eligible to become members of it. The Athenians regarded it as the most sacred institution of their state, and it was, in truth, the most venerable tribunal of the ancient world. Though it had been stripped of many of its prerogatives, it still retained its prestige and took cognizance of all matters relating to religion and education in Greece. Had St. Paul been invited to address the Roman Senate in the days of its greatest glory, he would have spoken before a more powerful but not a more august assembly than was the Areopagus the day that he stood before it on the summit of Mars’ Hill.

It was one of the great events that mark an epoch in the world’s history when Christianity, in the person of St. Paul, was summoned to appear for judgment before that high tribunal wherein all the cultivation and wisdom and intelligence of the gentile nations were concentrated. It was a solemn moment for the Christian cause, and what must have been the feelings of the great apostle as he ascended the long flight of stone steps that led him up to Mars’ Hill and into the midst of the sacred circle of the Areopagus? The curious multitude pressed after him; the twelve venerable judges, seated in benches hewn out of the rock, awaited him, impatient to dispose of this “setter-forth of new divinities.” It was a scene around which was gathered the glory of the ancient world and the expectation of the new. From the summit of that hill which overlooked Athens St. Paul could, as it were, survey all the wisdom and philosophy and religion of the past. His eye could rest on the spot of the Academy where Plato taught, and on the Lyceum where was the school of Aristotle. Right before him stood the Temple of Mars and the Pantheon of Minerva, and rising close above him was the Colossus of Athens, cast out of the brazen spoils of Marathon. The Acropolis, Athens, Greece were before him, and they summed up nearly all that was great in the past.

It was not the first time that St. Paul had preached Christ before a great assembly, and we may be assured that he entered upon his subject with his accustomed boldness. Standing up in the midst of the Areopagus, with outstretched hand, he began his abrupt exordium. Even the pagan poet Longinus, in his list of the orators of Greece, includes the name of “Paul of Tarsus, the patron,” as he says, “of an opinion not yet fully proved.” And St. Paul’s speech on this occasion must have called forth the full powers of his oratory. By all accounts the personal appearance of the great apostle was not striking, and we can hardly conceive of him as possessed of the graces of oratory; but these count for little in addressing popular assemblies. His power lay in the divine earnestness of his faith and his burning zeal for its propagation. He always spoke with the light that struck him blind on the road to Damascus shining in upon his soul, and the Voice that he heard ringing in his ear. Jesus Christ and his Gospel were an actuality to him, and he made them an actuality to all who heard him. There was no doubting the sincerity of his conviction—every tone of his voice, every expression of his countenance, every motion of his body was a declaration of the supreme power of the faith that possessed him. It was a novel experience to the free and easy Athenians, who were never thoroughly in earnest about anything, to have a man so consumed with earnestness make an appeal before them, and it must have impressed them not a little. They must have been a good deal taken by surprise also by the manner in which St. Paul introduced his subject. Instead of feeling his way timidly in the presence of so august an assemblage, he made a bold dash, carried the war at once into the enemy’s country, fought them on their own ground and with the weapons they themselves had furnished him. The people of Athens were so religious or so superstitious, or both, that they wanted to make sure that no god should be left unhonored in their city; and after raising an altar to every god of whom they had heard, they bethought themselves that there might still be some god of whom they had not heard, and so they raised an altar and dedicated it “To the unknown god.” Pausanias states that there were several such altars in Athens, and Petronius declares that so bountiful were the Athenians in providing altars and statues for the gods “that it was far easier to find a god in Athens than a man.” St. Paul might take it for granted that every false god was honored in Athens by name, and the only god who was “unknown” was the one true God whom he came to preach to them. This gave him at once an opening and a way to escape the accusation that he was a “setter-forth of strange divinities,” which would have been prejudicial to his cause before the Areopagus. It was a master-stroke, and in it we discover a good illustration of that cunning of the serpent which the apostles were told to imitate. It is supposed that we have only the outline of St. Paul’s speech on Mars’ Hill preserved to us in the Acts of the Apostles; and yet the outline is in itself complete and perfect in its adaptation to the audience. The Athenians were above all things proud of their city, and St. Paul told them that he was struck by its aspect; he noticed the religious feeling manifested in the setting up of so many objects of worship; and after having thus engaged the attention of the people he proceeded to lay before them the Christian conception of the Supreme Being, which must have recalled to the philosophers present the highest flights of Plato and commanded their attention. He struck directly at the atomic theory of the Epicureans by asserting the creative act of God and the divine Providence that rules the universe and orders all things. He spoke of the “God in whom we live, move, and be.” And the Stoics were full of interest; he appeared to side with their pantheistic notions of the Deity; he even quoted one of their poets—Aratus of Cilicia—and we can almost fancy some of the grave philosophers of this sect rising to applaud him. But in the next breath he crushed them, for he declared that God is a personal being, that he is equally the Father of all men, and that there is only one way to approach him—the same for all—the philosopher must come down from his high conceits and do penance just the same as the poor and illiterate. He broke down the barrier of race and national pride by declaring “that God made of one blood all the nations of mankind,” and the past times, however glorious they might appear, were in reality times of ignorance when the truth was not known. And to their utter astonishment he makes the “foolishness” of Christ and his resurrection the basis and proof of all religious truth and righteousness. This was the least philosophical part of St. Paul’s discourse and created the most opposition; but it was the most irresistible, for it was a fact.

Athens had heard great orators before, but this was the most immortal speech ever uttered in her hearing; even apart from its sacred character it would hold its own for eloquence and skill among the greatest productions of the past. It is the true model of Christian eloquence, and illustrates that economy in the way of presenting divine truth which is the most striking feature in the teaching of St. Paul. “Instead of uttering any invective,” says Dr. Newman, “against their polytheism, he began a discourse upon the unity of the divine nature, and then proceeded to claim the altar consecrated in the neighborhood to the unknown god as the property of Him whom he preached to them, and to enforce his doctrine of the divine immateriality, not by miracles but by argument, and that founded on the words of a heathen poet.”

But the speech was not well received, nay, it was interrupted, cut short, and, powerful as it was, only a very few persons in that large assembly were converted by it, and of these two only are mentioned—Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, and the woman Damaris, of whom nothing is known. It created a profound impression, nevertheless. It took the philosophers of Athens completely by surprise; they were wholly unprepared to meet it, and the only part to which they could make an immediate objection was the Resurrection, and they took advantage of this to postpone the discussion and so escape the relentless logic of St. Paul.

Nor did they give him another hearing, as they had promised. They were insincere; like the modern triflers with truth, they were afraid they might hear too much, and so took refuge in evasion. Such are still the tactics of flippant philosophers and men of bad faith all the world over. They simply do not want to know the truth, and hence they mock at it and evade it. But even the conversion of one member of the high council of Greece was a great gain for Christianity. Dionysius was a conquest worthy of St. Paul, and to have given to France her glorious St. Denis was a result that well repaid the highest effort of Christian eloquence.

Thus it was that Christian philosophy encountered Greek philosophy on the summit of Mars’ Hill, and silenced and dethroned it; and during twenty centuries thus has it silenced and dethroned every system that has come in conflict with it; and although its supremacy has been constantly disputed, it still remains supreme in the domain of reason and of truth. In cultivated Athens we behold the highest point to which unaided human reason can attain, and it is in cultivated Athens that we first find Christianity asserting its claim to be the gospel of reason as well as of faith.

Christianity is the only system of religion that has made philosophy its handmaiden and used it to elucidate its doctrines. It is, in fact, the only religious system that can confidently appeal to the higher powers of reason, and hence it is the only creed that has ever made really intellectual conquests, that has ever compelled rationalism and scepticism to pause before it and believe, or at least doubt. Christianity alone, among all the religions of the world, has been able to exact the complete homage of the minds as well as the hearts of cultivated men.

But although philosophy to a certain extent prepared the way for Christianity, and Christianity constantly uses philosophy and appeals to it, it is a great mistake to suppose that philosophy played a very important part in the formation and propagation of the Christian faith. The religion that bears the name of Christ is not a theory gradually developed, but from the very first a definite system of religious teaching resting on facts. The logic of facts, not of philosophy, has propagated Christianity. St. Paul appealed to philosophy in Athens, and he converted two persons. St. Peter appealed to facts in Jerusalem, and he converted eight thousand. This is about the proportion of the relative influence of philosophy and fact in the propagation of the Christian religion. Jesus and the Resurrection, the facts at the bare mention of which the Athenians mocked, were the facts that a century later converted Greece when the tide of human testimony spread on from Judea and confirmed them. Philosophical theories have never founded a religion, they have never wrought any great revolution in the belief of mankind; facts alone can produce wide-spread conviction and change.

The rationalism of our day affects to treat Christianity as a theory of religion, a mere phase in the development of the religious thought of mankind, and as such to judge it and dispose of it; it feigns to ignore altogether the Christian religion as a system resting on facts. This is certainly a crafty move; for it is easy to get rid of a theory, but facts cannot well be explained away. Once they are well established, facts are invincible. And the evidences of Christianity are facts—well-established, invincible facts—that can neither be ignored nor explained away. The Christian religion is a philosophical religion, inasmuch as it is in complete harmony with whatever is sound in the philosophy of any age; but it is also an historical religion, and in its origin and progress rests on the certain basis of human testimony.

The divine Founder of Christianity did not appear in a remote age of darkness and obscurity, but in an age of intellectual culture and enlightenment—in an age when history had already attained to its full purpose and perfection. So that the life and doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the progress of the religion he founded, at once dropped into the stream of history and became a part of it. This is shown by the fact that so many contemporary pagan historians have in their writings referred to Christ, his miracles, his doctrines, and his sufferings.

The Great Teacher who came to give true light to the world was not afraid of the light; and it was without doubt a part of the eternal design that he should appear in an era of intellectual activity and culture and criticism, so that human reason might have no excuse for rejecting him, and the future enemies of Christianity could not upbraid it with being a system hatched out in darkness and obscurity. Here is a point we should particularly insist upon: Jesus Christ has his place in history as much as Cæsar or Napoleon or Washington or any other great man of the past. His miracles are as much matters of history as the victories of Cæsar; his law is as much a matter of history as the Code of Napoleon; and the kingdom of Christianity which he founded is as palpable a fact to-day as the republic of George Washington.

Christianity is only a theory, say the rationalists. What a barefaced falsehood in the face of all history! Christianity an effect without an adequate cause, say they. What an outrage on reason! Verily, the theories by which the rationalistic school would account for Christianity are on a par with the Hindoo theory of the world, for they also rest on nothing at all.

Christianity is not a natural outgrowth or development of Judaism; it is not a skilful adaptation of Oriental liturgy and Greek philosophy; but it is a religion of reason and truth, resting on the eternal facts of the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the God of all truth.

Footnote 161:

Renan. _Vie de Saint Paul_, chap. vii. p. 126.

Footnote 162:

Renan, _Vie de Saint Paul_, c. vii. p. 135.

ONE TO ONE.

“The one soul to the one God.”—REV. HENRY GIESEN, C.SS.R.

“One unto one!” O Jesus, can thy creature
Be truly one to one with thee, her King?
Can the poor sinful heart for which thine suffered
To thee alone in love and sorrow cling?
To thee, the Son of God, the Word Eternal,
So dreadly pure, so infinitely just?
“One unto one”! My God, when I would say it,
’Tis answered me, “Remember thou art dust.”

“One unto one”! O Jesus, meek and loving,
And humbled down to Bethlehem for me,
Humbled to own a human heart and nature,
Jesus, my Saviour, _now_ I come to thee!
I see thee on thy Virgin Mother’s bosom—
An infant, though a God, a Judge, a King:
“One unto one”! Ah! yes, my infant Saviour,
To thee at last I dare my love to bring.

Again, in prayer and sorrow I behold thee
Prostrate beneath the olive-trees’ dark shade,
The blood of agony for us outpouring,
The burden of our sins upon thee laid.
“One unto one”! Yes, here too may thy creature,
With all her sins before her, bring her heart
Near unto thine; for she is only asking
That in thy agony she may have part.

“One unto one”! The thorny crown, the scourges,
The gall, the nails, the cross, the cruel spear,
The death-swoon, and the last dear words—O Jesus!
“One unto one”—how can _I_ say it here?
Only thy Mother with her priceless dolors,
Methinks, can rightly say this daring word;
She who shared all thy passion, meekly standing
Beside thy cross, soul-pierced with Simeon’s sword.

Dead is the Son of God, the Son of Mary;
Dead for our love—for very love of me!
“One unto one”! O Jesus, my Redeemer,
Grant that my life may die for love of thee.
Grant that thy cross may be my only treasure,
Thy blood my riches, and thy grace my prize;
Until, my penance done, my sins all pardoned,
“One unto one,” to thee my spirit flies!

HIS IRISH COUSINS.

Mr. Eugene Percival was seated in the dining-room of the Garrick Club, London, engaged in discussing a quiet little dinner consisting of a plate of real turtle, a red mullet, and a pin-tailed duck, preparatory to turning into Covent Garden to hear Titiens in _Semiramide_, when a servant approached him, bearing two letters upon a silver salver.

“Irish mail, sir.”

“For me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Percival quietly finished his glass of pale sherry and ordered a clean plate ere he troubled himself about his Hibernian correspondence.

“Irish letters!” he murmured. “Who could write to me from that out-of-the-world country? Jack Hotham, possibly. His regiment is quartered on some solid bit of bog called the Curragh.” He leisurely took up the nearest epistle. “A woman’s hand, by Jove! And such a hand. How she does scatter the ink! _Place aux dames._ Now, madam, I am prepared for the worst.” And throwing himself back in his chair, he proceeded to open the envelope. The letter ran as follows:

“BALLYBO, CO. MAYO, June 1, 187-.

“DEAR COUSIN: A very nice young man, who says he is intimate with
you, has been stopping here for a few days for the salmon-fishing.
By the merest accident your name came on the _tapis_, and I
immediately claimed you as a kinsman, my mother and your father
having been second cousins. As kinsfolk should at least become
acquainted with one another, I take this opportunity of letting you
know that my eldest boy, Charley, and his sister Geraldine, are
going to visit London next week, when any attention you can show
them will be most gratefully received by your affectionate cousin,

“MARTHA MARY GRACE DEVEREUX.

“P. S. They will stop at the Charing Cross Hotel. Charley is
twenty-three and Geraldine four years younger.”

“Of all the cool epistles I ever read this _is_ the coolest,” muttered Percival, holding the letter at arm’s length, as though it were combustible. “_I_ never heard of Martha Mary Grace Devereux before. _I_ have no relations in Ireland. The idea of having a hulking savage with a brogue that would peel a potato, and dressed like a navvy, and an awkward, dowdy, gawky girl, thrust upon me is rather too good. No, no, my Irish friends. I respect you at Bally—Bally-what-you-may-call-it, but in Piccadilly not quite.” Here he commenced his ripe Stilton. “The idea of my being seen in Mayfair with—Pshaw! it’s too good.” He turned the second letter over with his knife.

“A school-boy’s hand. I suppose this is from Charley, with a modest demand for a box at the opera for himself and his sister for every night during their stay, seats on one of the Four-in-hand Club coaches, tickets for the Zoo for Sunday, invitations to swell balls. I know what Irish cousins mean, and, _per Bacco_! I’ll keep the Channel rolling between us. Let’s see what Charley says. A monogram, C. D. Gorgeous! Who’d have thought of so much civilization in Mayo—wherever that may be?”

“BALLYBO.

“Mr. Charley Devereux’ compliments to Mr. Percival”—that’s civil at any rate—“and begs to say that in order to oblige his mother”—whose mother? My poor mother died when I was toothless—“he writes this note. Mr. C. D. doesn’t believe in bothering people who don’t care about him”—come, now, this is a sensible lad—“and he doesn’t care for people whom he doesn’t know”—sensible again. “If Mr. Percival wants to see Mr. C. D., he will find him at the Charing Cross Hotel on and after Monday next.”

* * * * *

“I say, Minniver, just come over and take your Lafitte here. I have such a _bon bouche_ for you!” said Percival, addressing a gentleman seated at a neighboring table.

“What’s the row?” demanded Mr. Minniver, a tall, aristocratic man, whose hair was parted in the centre and whose eye-glass was the sole occupation of his life.

“Two letters from Ireland.”

“No!”

“Fact.”

“Take my glawss and decanter over to Mr. Percival’s table,” said Mr. Minniver, addressing a waiter.

“Shall I read ’em to you, Minniver?”

“Are they in Irish?”

“Oh! dear, no.”

“Then let me have the two barrels.”

“Congratulate me, old fellow.”

“On what?”

“I have been claimed by Irish cousins.”

“What a nuisance!” observed Mr. Minniver in a tone of intense disgust, and letting his eye-glass fall on the table with a click, whilst he took a sip of the rich, tawny wine.

“That’s not enough. To claim me does not fill their cup of happiness. They are coming over to see me.”

“By Jove!” wiping the glass carefully and screwing it hard into the corner of his eye.

“Yes. Just read this letter. This is the one that claims me, that takes me into the fold, and here’s another that repudiates me.”

“That’s a very extraordinary document, Percival,” observed Mr. Minniver with an owl-like glance, solemn, important, but vacant withal.

“Read this now; it’s from Charley.”

“Why, this ought to be framed and glazed. How old Thackeray would have chuckled over this in the smoking-room! You must let us have it in the smoking-room; the fellows are infernally dull just now.”

“Take both, my dear boy.”

“Thanks. What are you going to do?”

“Preserve a masterly inactivity.”

“You’ll reply?”

“I think not.”

“Drop a pasteboard at the Cross?”

“Cards are expensive luxuries just now. You forget it’s the height of the season, Minniver!”

“Then you’ll let it sink?”

“Most unquestionably.”

“I s’pose you’re right.”

“Well, rather. I can stand a good deal but Irish cousins. As the Princess Huncomun says in ‘Tom Thumb,’ ‘I shudder at the gross idea.’”

“It would never do, Percival—never, never.” And wagging his empty head sagaciously, Mr. Minniver again dipped his beak in the juice of the grape.

Mr. Eugene Percival is a swell of the first water; a bureaucrat in the most exalted sense of the term; a clerk in the Foreign Office, with expectations of a third secretaryship at no distant date. His mother, an heiress, died in giving him birth; his father, a captain in the Seventeenth Lancers, fell in the bloody ride of death at Balaklava. A guardian took possession of the boy, and, having placed him at Eton, later on transplanted him to Cambridge, where he took a degree, making a fair fight for honors. The failure of the banking firm of Overend & Gurney, of Lombard Street, deprived Percival of over half his property, and then he resolved upon work.

“I cannot live upon fifteen hundred a year and idleness,” he said.

“I could live, and live well, on a hundred a year with work.”

Through the influence of no less a personage than Benjamin Disraeli he was installed at the Foreign Office at a nominal salary, and the evening upon which this story opens he was twenty-five years of age, five feet eight inches in height, with yellow hair closely cropped, as is the fashion amongst the golden youth of the present hour, his eyes dark blue, his nose a delicate aquiline, his mouth and teeth unexceptionable, and the whole man bearing the unmistakable stamp of gentleman.

A few days subsequent to the receipt of his Irish letters Mr. Eugene Percival strolled from the Garrick into Covent Garden Market, but little altered in its appearance since the days when Sam Johnson and Topham Beauclerk went on a rouse amongst the vegetable wagons, and at unhallowed hours, as the worthy lexicographer subsequently—and sorrowfully—admitted.

Taking the central arcade, the bureaucrat stopped to admire bouquets that would have brought tears of envy into the pretty eyes of Mlle. Louise of the _Marché aux Fleurs_, so fearfully and wonderfully were they made up, so delicious in their harmonies, such veritable tone-poems in their lustrous yet satisfying effects. Stepping into a flower-shop, he invested in a two-shilling moss rosebud reclining upon the petals of a sprig of stefanotis, attached to his coat by a young lady who addressed him by name.

“Mr. Pommery ‘as just been ’ere, Mr. Percival.”

“What! another bunch of violets?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied with a saucy laugh.

“Why, he must be spending a small fortune.”

“These wiolets come from Algiers.”

“And he sends a bunch every day?”

“Every day, sir.”

“And you are sworn to secrecy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you won’t tell to whom those violets go?”

“Not for anything.”

“_Where_ do they go?”

The young lady shook her head.

“It is refreshing,” laughed Percival as he quitted the shop, “to find _one_ woman who can keep a secret.”

He strolled down the arcade, gazing at the flowers and fruits, and the _bizarre_ crowd that gently surged hither and thither, from the costermonger who came for his salad and radishes, to the “Dook” who sought his five-guinea bouquet; from the weedy-looking woman, smelling horribly of gin, who shelled peas, to the countess in search of an orchid to make up her priceless collection.

He was standing opposite a window wherein lay exposed a basket of Belle Angevine pears labelled “£30 a dozen,” when a hand was laid on his shoulder and a cheery voice exclaimed:

“Not thinking of that lot, Percival?”

“Not quite, Pommery. They’re a cut above me. My buying price is sixpence, and I falter at anything above that lordly sum.”

“They’re not much, these Angevines. I had a cut into one last night at a little dinner Baby Bowles gave six of us at the Star and Garter—a pre-marital affair.”

“Pre-marital! Has the Baby surrendered at discretion?”

“He has surrendered, which says little for his discretion.”

“_Pauvre garçon!_ By the way, you’ve been away, Pommery?”

“Yaas.”

“Whither?”

“Guess.”

“Norway, after the salmon?”

“No.”

“Monaco, after _Rouge et Noir_?”

“No.”

“Paris, after a good dinner?”

“You’d never guess. Hold on to your umbrella now, Percival, for I’m about to startle you. I’ve been in Ireland.”

“Never!”

“A fact, I assure you.”

“And you’re alive to tell the tale?”

“Ireland is not bad quarters, I can tell you. I was capitally fed. I had a game of Polo in the Phœnix Park—and that _is_ a park. I had as good a rubber at the Kildare Street Club as ever I played at the Raleigh. I saw some very fit soldiering at the Curragh of Kildare. I landed my thirty-seven-pound salmon from a river with an impossible name in Connemara. I took to Connemara _con amore_—excuse the pun, it’s rather early. And I’ll let you into a secret, Percival: I mean to return for the grouse on the 20th of August.”

“Apropos of Ireland, get Minniver to show you two letters I received last week from some people calling themselves my cousins; they are the richest things in town. They have had nothing in the smoking-room of the Garrick so good since the night old Fladgate told Thackeray that, in order to render his lectures on the Four Georges a success, he should hire a piano.”

Jack Pommery is a clever, hard-working young barrister—a coming man. He was senior wrangler of his year at Cambridge, and carried off one or two “big things.” He rowed in the ‘varsity eight and boxed like a prize-fighter. Pommery, while he believes in work, stoutly maintains that the brain can only do a certain amount of it, and under cover of this theory casts aside wig and gown for a run with the Pytchley, a pull on the Thames, a breezer in the Channel under double reefs, a month on the moors—in a word, he goes in for what Micky Free termed “hapes o’ divarshin.”

“I’ve just seen your _fleuriste_, Jack. She still keeps the key of the blue chamber.”

“She’ll not sell me.”

“And you won’t let me into the secret—you won’t divulge the name of the violet lady?”

“Some day.”

“Some day is no day.”

“It’s a caprice, Percival. Every clever man has a caprice.”

“Bravo! Let me hear you blow that trumpet again. Why, the guard of the Windsor Coach doesn’t use his yard of tin with greater effect,” laughed Percival.

“Bah! chaff! The story is very simple. It is idyllic. I meet a girl, no matter where. She has violet eyes. She is as modest as a violet. _Qui me cherche me trouve_ is her motto—a true woman’s motto, my man. I went spooney on her. I am spoons still. I told her that until I met her again I would send her a bunch of violets every day. I send the bunch of violets every day, _et voilà tout_!”

“Very pretty and sentimental, ’pon honor—worthy of being written by Wilkie Collins and set to music by Arthur Sullivan. I won’t press you on the subject, Jack, but I’ll tell you what I will press you to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Come back to the Garrick and have a steak—one of our famous fat slugs of beef that Thackeray revelled over after his favorite dish of tripe.”

“Try a chop at the Albion with me. It’s a real English chop-house, a tavern in the best sense of the good old English word. We’ll be sure to meet some queer people there. The theatrical stars most do congregate within its precincts. Toole, Irving, Barry Sullivan haunt it when not ‘on circuit.’ Confound their impudence in appropriating the pet terms of my honorable profession!”

“Have at thy chops, slave!” cried Percival melodramatically as they passed along through groves of cabbages, batteries of turnips, golden vistas of carrots, groups of women engaged in shelling peas.

The two entered the tavern, and, having seated themselves in a sort of loose box constructed of black oak, with a table set in the middle, Pommery gave the order to a waiter whose pronounced accent bespoke an intimate acquaintance with the road that leads from the Upper Lake at Killarney to Gougawn Barra. He was an honest-looking, open-faced, elderly man, civil without being servile, and the possessor of a twinkle in the corner of his eye that proclaimed the land of his nativity equally with his unctuous and oily brogue.

A loud rapping on the table in the next compartment made itself heard, while an authoritative voice called:

“Has that sheep been caught yet?”

“It’s on the fire, sir,” responded the waiter.

“I suppose you intend that as a sample of Irish wit.” This said with a sneer.

“Troth, mebbe it’s good enough for—” and the man checked himself.

“Let me have none of your impertinence, fellow. You Irish require to be kept under heel, every one of you.”

“Do we?”

“You do, and it takes an Englishman to do it.”

“See that, now,” said the waiter, angrily brushing the table, and by a vigorous effort keeping back the fierce retort that was on the leap in his heart.

“Get me my chop.”

“I’ll get it, never fear,” hurrying away.

Percival and his companion overheard this dialogue.

“If I were that waiter,” exclaimed Pommery, “I’d chuck the chop at that insolent fellow’s head.”

“What can the poor wretch do? He’s paid for this sort of thing.”

“He’s not paid to be insulted by a man who, the chances are, considers himself a gentleman.”

“It’s very bad form.”

The waiter returned with the autocrat’s luncheon.

“How dare you bring me a chop cooked in this way? Do you imagine I am in an Irish pig-sty? Send me an English waiter.”

At this moment a tall, awkward-looking youth, attired in a home-spun suit of gray frieze, ill-fitting if not shabby, slowly arose from a table right opposite, and, lounging over, quietly asked:

“Will I do?”

“Do what, sir?” demanded the irate Saxon.

“Wait on you.”

“Wait on _me_? You are not a waiter.”

“I am an Irishman; perhaps _I_ might be able to please you better than my countryman.”

Pommery leaned over to Percival:

“There’s some fun here.”

“There’s danger,” was the reply.

The bully stared very hard at the young Irishman, surveying him from head to foot.

“I don’t want _you_,” he growled.

“Oh! you don’t,” still in the same calm tone.

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“You’ve had your answer, my gentleman. Go back to your luncheon.”

“Not for one moment. I’ve not quite done with you yet. I have heard your observations to this helpless old man”—his voice quivering, his eye flashing—“your brutal insolence.”

“Sir!” starting as if he had been stung.

“Your ruffianly comments,” continued the other. “You knew that your eighteen pence was your armor, and that you could insult both him and his country with impunity. Now, my good fellow, _I_ am an Irishman, and, only that I happen to be in a very particular hurry, I’d compel you to eat that chop.”

“What do you mean, sir?” he gasped.

“Precisely what I say,” replied the other.

“How dare—”

“See here, now, my good fellow, keep your hectoring for helpless waiters and feeble women. I come from a country where the word _dare_ reaps a crop of broken bones. I know you and your mongrel class. And before I leave let me give you a bit of advice. Don’t speak disrespectfully of Ireland until you are sure of your company. The moment you find yourself surrounded by your own set fire away.” And nodding jauntily, he walked to the cashier’s desk, paid his bill, gave the now hilarious waiter a shilling, and sprang into a hansom that awaited him at the door, leaving the bully turning red and white by turns and looking the very impersonation of baffled hate and rage.

“That’s no end of a brick,” cried Pommery glowingly.

“A gentleman to the back-bone.”

“I’ll swear it.”

“Blood will tell.”

“I wonder who he can be? Depend on’t he’s of the right lot.”

“What a nice touch of the brogue!”

“Just a _soupçon_. I’m awfully sorry he didn’t whip the fellow.”

After some fierce yet gloomy consultation with the manager and a couple of obsequious waiters the autocrat approached the table at which the two swells were seated.

“You have been witness to a ruffianly act,” clearing his throat, “on the part of a scoundrel who has just left. It amounts to an assault in the eyes of the law. I do not intend to let the matter drop here. I’m an Englishman, and I’d take it out of that sneak in double-quick. You saw a gentleman assaulted—”

“I saw him assault _no_ gentleman,” said Percival.

“You saw him assault _me_, sir,” retorted the other loftily.

“I did; but I saw him assault no gentleman,” coolly surveying the bully from head to foot. “You, sir, are what we call a cad. Come, Pommery.”

The autocrat muttered something with reference to “swells,” eyes, blood, and other full-flavored language as the two young men sauntered forth in the direction of “the Garden.”

“There’s nothing to be done at the office to-day; suppose we go to the Park—the Ladies’ Mile. Alice Lindsay has been presented by her uncle, Sir Winifred, with a superb mount; let’s see how she takes to it.”

It is right genial pleasure to lean upon the rails in Hyde Park and watch equestrians and equestriennes flash past on satin-coated, arch-necked, dainty-limbed horses; to meet one’s friends beneath the shade of the elms, and to enjoy a good round gossip, than which there is nothing pleasanter under the sun.

Percival and Pommery knew everybody worth knowing. Nods, becks, and wreathed smiles greeted them right, left, and centre. Fair dames showered graciousness upon them, handsome cavaliers nodded familiarly.

“Well, you Pylades and Orestes, Castor and Pollux, Siamese twins, how am you?” exclaimed a dapper little gentleman mounted upon a rattling cob, reining in and addressing our two friends.

“Ah! Lindsay, you here? I thought you were in Constantinople,” greeted Percival.

“So I were,” perverting his English; “but I left my fez behind me to show my ’fiz’ here. Twiggey voo?”

“How is your sister?”

“Pretty bobbish.”

“I hear she has a superb mount.”

“Too superb, _mon camarade_. She’s a lucky girl if her collar-bone isn’t fractured before twenty-four hours. The brute is a good brute, but just as fit for a woman to ride as a wild zebra. Here she comes. By Jove! she can’t hold him.”

A young girl cantered up, very red in the face from hard pulling.

“Well, Alice, you’ve had enough of that brass elephant, hasn’t you?”

“Not a bit of it,” cried Miss Lindsay, a bright, aristocratic-looking, blue-eyed, tow-haired young lady, with lines of decision around a saucy mouth, and with a form that bespoke the use of dumb-bells and all those minor appanages relating to the development of muscular Christianity.

“Shall I ride with you?”

“No, Fred; I can do the mile with Bertie,” a younger brother astride a shaggy Shetland.

“Don’t you see two fellows whom you know, Alice?”

“Why, of course I do. I’ve nearly nodded my head off at both of them, and they have jerked the rims of their beavers out of shape,” laughed the girl. “_Allons_, Bertie.” And lightly touching the magnificent but vicious-looking animal, which she sat _à ravir_, she started off like an arrow from a bow, followed by the shaggy Shetland.

“Have a lift behind, queer fellows? No? Then I’ll leave you to your meditations.” And Fred Lindsay trotted off in the direction taken by his sister.

“That’s the happiest dog I know, Percival,” observed Pommery. “Ten thousand a year, a house in May-Fair, a villa on the Thames, a shooting-box in Scotland, a loving tailor, a careful cook, and the constitution of a horse and cart.”

“He has, as the Americans say, a good time of it. By the way, who’s to woo and win his sister?”

“Dymoke, of the Guards.”

“Why, he hasn’t—but, I say, what’s this? A runaway, by George!—a woman. She’ll get thrown; she reels in the saddle,” jumping excitedly on a seat. “She’s a brick. She’s pulling the brute. Yes—no—it’s Miss Lindsay. She can do nothing. She’ll be killed if she loses her seat. The pace is awful. She’s lost her head. She’s done for.”

Such were the exclamations rapidly uttered by Eugene Percival as the fainting form of Miss Lindsay was borne past him like a flash.

“Magnificently done!” shouted Pommery. “That fellow is a man, whoever he is.”

Just as the young girl was swaying heavily from side to side in her saddle, and about to sink fainting to the earth, one of the onlookers plunged forward, and, seizing the reins of the maddened horse in a grasp of steel, brought the animal almost to his haunches. The swooning girl was thrown violently forward, to be received in his arms as though she were a down pillow cast at him in play.

Percival and Pommery forced their way through the crowd.

“Make way, please; we are friends of this lady,” cried Percival. “Let her have air. Carry her into the shade.”

Miss Lindsay was borne to the pathway and placed upon one of the benches, while some cold water was dashed in her face.

“How splendidly she behaved!” cried one of the bystanders.

“Such nerve!”

“Such English pluck!”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed the gentleman who had been the means of rescuing her, “I know twenty Irish girls who would have brought that brute to his senses without any of this sort of fuss.”

At this juncture Fred Lindsay galloped up.

“Is she much hurt?” he anxiously demanded.

“She’s not hurt at all; she’s frightened.” And half a dozen persons volunteered a statement of the occurrence, all speaking together.

“How _can_ I thank you?” said Lindsay, turning to the stranger. “Let me have your name and address. By Jove! I must do something to express our gratitude.”

“I stop twenty horses a day in the fields at home, and wickeder brutes than that, so don’t say one word.” And ere Lindsay could interpose the other had mingled with the crowd.

“Did you see him?” asked Percival of Pommery.

“Who?”

“The young fellow who rescued Miss Lindsay.”

“Not particularly.”

“Why, it’s our Irishman.”

“So it is. I’m awfully sorry not to have spoken to him. What a fellow he is, to be sure!”

* * * * *

Eugene Percival, amongst other invitations, received a card for a dinner-party at the Lindsays’ for the following Tuesday.

“We’ve been sadly put about,” said Miss Lindsay as he arrived, “groomed to a hair.” “Our party was made up, fitting oh! so nicely. I had my old man and my old lady, and the man who can talk opera, and the girl who can talk Tennyson, and my M. P. who can talk politics. I had the agricultural element and the lawn-tennis element, and a man who can talk across the table, and the man who knows everything—yourself—and lo! a wicked fairy _bon gré mal gré_ adds two unexpected guests to my party by a wave of her wand, and spoils it. Isn’t it awful?” cries the hostess piteously, elevating a superb bouquet to her dainty nose.

“What did she give you?”

“Only fancy—two Irish people!”

“This is ironical of destiny,” laughed Percival.

“I won’t know what to say to them, what to do with them. I want you to stand in the gap, Mr. Percival, to see me through this miserable _contretemps_.”

“Put me down for anything, from the _Annals of the Four Masters_ to dancing an Irish jig. I haven’t the faintest idea who the Four Masters are, and I’ve never seen the jig danced, but ’shure I’ll troy,’” endeavoring to imitate the Irish brogue, and failing dismally, as does every cockney rash enough to venture upon the experiment.

“I’ve never seen these people. I called at their hotel yesterday, but they were out doing St. Paul’s, or the Tower, or the Houses of Parliament, or the Thames Tunnel, as is the habit of tourists proper.”

“How did you drop into this trap, Miss Lindsay?”

“This wise: My uncle, Sir Winifred, spent some weeks last autumn with them in Ireland. He is a man who is ever anxious to repay a courtesy twofold.”

“I wonder, if I lent him ten sovereigns, would he return me twenty?” laughed Percival.

“If it was _en règle_, he would most decidedly. He, it appears, met them—wherever do you think?”

“I’m sure I cannot say.”

“At Madame Tussaud’s.”

“Sir Winifred at such a place! What an old wax-work it is!”

“He loves that Chamber of Horrors, and every time a murderer’s head is added to it my uncle potters off directly to have a look at it. He encountered his Irish friends in this Chamber last Saturday, and instantly takes them to the Star and Garter at Richmond to dine. He had them at the Zoo on Sunday, last night at the opera, and to-night he has foisted them on me; so you won’t mind roughing it a little, will you?”

“Certainly not. Is there anything Irish in the house? One must talk Ireland, you know.”

“Nothing except a genuine Ulster that never crossed the Channel in its life. We bought it last year at the Robber of the North’s, McDougal, at Inverness.”

“Were you in Scotland lawst year?” drawled a pink-faced young man, lounging up.

“Oh! yes; we did the Kyles of Bute, and the Crenan Canal, and Oban, and on by Ballachullish to the Pass of Glencoe, and we slept at Bannavic, and went up the Caledonian Canal.” And Miss Lindsay went off into a gush of rapture over the glorious scenery of the land o’cakes.

A powdered-headed flunky announced Mr. and Miss Devereux, but in such a manner that the name might as well have been Smith. Miss Lindsay courteously advanced to receive her guests with “So pleased to see you! Called at your hotel yesterday. How long have you been in London? How do you like Babylon? Your first visit?”

Charley Devereux—for ’tis he—gazes very hard at his hostess. Could he be mistaken, or is not this the young lady whom he “chucked off” the runaway horse?

“Are you fond of riding?” he abruptly asked.

“Oh! passionately. I ride every day.”

“Did you ride in the park on Friday?”

“Yes, and was nearly killed. My horse, a thoroughbred, bolted. I fought him as long as I could. I got giddy, and I can recollect nothing till I found myself stretched on a bench beneath one of the trees on the side path.”

“Were you thrown?” asked Miss Devereux, of whom more anon.

“Well, yes and no. A man in the crowd—a young mechanic, my brother says—stopped the horse and caught me as I was flying through the air.”

“Charley, don’t _you_ know something—”

A look from her brother silenced Miss Devereux.

“Were you present?” asked Miss Lindsay.

“I should rather say he was,” interposed Lindsay, who had just entered, giving a finishing touch to his toilette as he bounded down the stairs. “Why, hang it, Alice, don’t you know that it is to this gentleman you probably owe your life?”

Miss Lindsay opened her blue eyes very wide.

“Is this possible?” she cried.

“Why, of course it is. My dear fellow,” exclaimed Lindsay, seizing Charley Devereux by both hands, “need I say what intense pleasure it is to find my sister’s rescuer in the person of a friend of my uncle?”

“Mr. Devereux,” added Alice, presenting two dainty hands in gloves of many buttons, and impulsively flinging away her brother’s hands, “this _is_ a joyous surprise. Why, Fred told me you were a mechanic—that is,” she added with a blush—“you see he is awfully near-sighted.”

“Don’t apologize, Miss Lindsay. My old home-spun suit is becoming very dingy, but I like it so well that I wouldn’t part with it for one of Smallpage’s marvellous frocks.”

The pompous flunky announced dinner.

“You will take _me_ down, Mr. Devereux. I shall jilt Lord Jocelyn for the _preux chevalier_ who has so charmingly proved that the age of chivalry is not yet dead. By the way, I must do _my devoirs_.” And summoning Percival from a distant corner of the room, she presented him to Miss Devereux.

He did not catch the name, but, offering that young lady his arm, he moved towards the door.

“Now for pigs and potatoes,” he thought.

He took a good look at the young girl on his arm, and he beheld a very charming form, soft brown wavy hair in a glorious luxuriance, tastefully and neatly bound up in plaits, a fair skin slightly freckled, a nose a little tip-tilted like the petal of a flower, a rich red mouth, and earnest gray eyes shaded by long, sweeping lashes.

“Your first visit to London?”

“My first.”

She turned her face to him, and then he perceived its delicate oval, its low, straight forehead, its pencilled brows, its charming innocence and purity of expression. This was not the brogue he expected to hear. This was not the face or form he had so dreaded to meet. Why, he could get on with this charming bit of Emerald without any reference to the Isle, save what it might please her Serene Greenship to indulge in.

“And how do you like London?” he asked, after the gentle fuss of seat-taking had subsided, and every person had opened his or her napkin after his or her own particular fashion.

“It oppresses me.”

“In what way?”

“It is too vast, too grand, too colossal. It wearies. I have had more headache since I came here than ever I earned over my Latin grammar.”

“Latin grammar! Are you so deep as Latin?”

“I have taught Latin,” and, seeing his puzzled expression, “to my _very_ young brothers.”

“By Jove!” It’s all Percival has to say, and he says it.

Miss Devereux indulged in a low, musical laugh at her cavalier’s expense.

“You’re laughing at me?” said the bureaucrat, giving a tremendous tug to his moustache.

“I am,” was her reply.

“Why?”

“It’s singularly amusing to hear an Englishman focus all his energies upon his favorite exclamation.”

“And what do you say in Ireland?” he retorted, somewhat nettled.

“You must ask my brother.”

“If he waits till I ask him,” thought Percival, “he’ll be as gray as a badger.”

Mr. Percival indulged in another gaze at his fair companion, who was engaged in the unromantic task of enjoying her dinner, while he found himself _hors de combat_ after a spoonful of soup and a devilled whitebait. He discovered a certain magnetism about her that irresistibly attracted him. The charm of her beauty was not in her golden hair, whose wavelets threw up the brilliancy of her rich color; not in the pure cream-tinted skin, not in the exquisitely delicate curve of the chin and cheek, nor in the sauciness of her _retroussé_ nose; it was the unconscious pleasure in her face, a joy that positively breathed happiness from every feature.

“How does it come that you have no brogue?” he abruptly asked.

“Oh! dear, yes I have. I would shame the bogs of Ballynashaughnagaun if I did not fairly represent them in the land of the Saxon.”

“Do pronounce that jaw-breaker again.”

“Ballynashaughnagaun.”

“How dreadful!”

“We have longer names than that.” And Miss Devereux, to Percival’s intense amusement, proceeded to run over the townlands surrounding her wild Connemara home.

“Only fancy if a man got lost in Knocka-what-you-may-call-um; why, he’d perish by the wayside ere he could ask his way to the place from whence he came.”

“I am quite prepared to think that you would,” she laughed.

“I’m rather a dab at languages,” he said, with a certain tinge of self-satisfaction in his tone.

“I beg your pardon—a what?”

“A dab.”

“May I ask which of your languages is that word borrowed from, Mr. Percival?”

“It’s supposed to be English,” he laughed.

“Oh! I am so relieved. I was afraid you were going to attach it to Ireland, and then—”

“And then?”

“_Guerra al cuchillo_—war to the knife.”

“Are you a dab?—I beg pardon; do you speak Spanish?”

“I do; we are quite an Irish-Spanish colony.”

“An Irish-Spanish colony! In the name of wonder what is that?”

“I’ll tell you. The _Infanta_, one of the largest of the vessels attached to the Spanish Armada, was wrecked on the coast of Mayo. The survivors settled along the coast as far as Galway. My great, great, great, ever so great-grand-mamma was a daughter of one of the officers.”

“How is it that you come to have such glorious gray eyes?” This was said enthusiastically.

“Do not let that iced _soufflet_ pass, Mr. Percival; it is too good to snub so unmercifully.”