Czytaj książkę: «The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 2», strona 25

CHAPTER XXXII. A LESSON IN POLITICS

In the deep bay-window of a long, gloomy-looking dinner-room of a Dublin mansion, sat a party of four persons around a table plentifully covered with decanters and bottles, and some stray remnants of a dessert which seemed to have been taken from the great table in the middle of the apartment. The night was falling fast, for it was past eight o’clock of an evening in autumn, and there was barely sufficient light to descry the few scrubby-looking ash and alder trees that studded the barren grass-plot between the house and the stables. There was nothing to cheer in the aspect without, nor, if one were to judge from the long pauses that ensued after each effort at conversation, the few and monotonous words of the speakers, were there any evidences of a more enlivening spirit within doors. The party consisted of Dr. Hickman and his son Mr. O’Reilly, Mr. Heffernan, and “Counsellor” O’Halloran.

At first, and by the dusky light in the chamber, it would seem as if but three persons were assembled; for the old doctor, whose debility had within the last few months made rapid strides, had sunk down into the recess of the deep chair, and save by a low quavering respiration, gave no token of his presence. As these sounds became louder and fuller, the conversation gradually dropped into a whisper, for the old man was asleep. In the subdued tone of the speakers, the noiseless gestures as they passed the bottle from hand to hand, it was easy to mark that they did not wish to disturb his slumbers. It is no part of our task to detail how these individuals came to be thus associated. The assumed object which at this moment drew them together was the approaching trial at Galway of a record brought against the Hickmans by Darcy. It was Bick-nell’s last effort, and with it must end the long and wearisome litigation between the houses.

The case for trial had nothing which could suggest any fears as to the result. It was on a motion for a new trial that the cause was to come on. The plea was misdirection and want of time, so that, in itself, the matter was one of secondary importance. The great question was that a general election now drew nigh, and it was necessary for O’Reilly to determine on the line of political conduct he should adopt, and thus give O’Halloran the opportunity of a declaration of his client’s sentiments in his address to the jury.

The conduct of the Hickmans since their accession to the estate of Gwynne Abbey had given universal dissatisfaction to the county gentry. Playing at first the game of popularity, they assembled at their parties people of every class and condition; and while affronting the better-bred by low association, dissatisfied the inferior order by contact with those who made their inferiority more glaring. The ancient hospitalities of the Abbey were remembered in contrast with the ostentatious splendor of receptions in which display and not kindness was intended. Vulgar presumption and purse-pride had usurped the place once occupied by easy good breeding and cordiality; and even they who had often smarted under the cold reserve of Lady Eleanor’s manner, were now ready to confess that she was born to the rank she assumed, and not an upstart, affecting airs of superiority. The higher order of the county gentry accordingly held aloof, and at last discontinued their visits altogether; of the second-rate many who were flattered at first by invitations, became dissatisfied at seeing the same favors extended to others below them, and they, too, ceased to present themselves, until, at last, the society consisted of a few sycophantic followers, who swallowed the impertinence of the host with the aid of his claret, and buried their own self-respect, if they were troubled with such a quality, under the weight of good dinners.

Hickman O’Reilly for a length of time affected not to mark the change in the rank and condition of his guests, but as one by one the more respectable fell off, and the few left were of a station that the fine servants of the house regarded as little above their own, he indignantly declined to admit any company in future, reduced the establishment to the few merely necessary for the modest requirements of the family, and gave it to be known that the uncongenial tastes and habits of his neighbors made him prefer isolation and solitude to such association.

For some time he had looked to England as the means of establishing for himself and his son a social position. The refusal of the minister to accord the baronetcy was a death-blow to this hope, while he discovered that mere wealth, unassisted by the sponsorship of some one in repute, could not suffice to introduce Beeeham into the world of fashion. Although these things had preyed on him severely, there was no urgent necessity to act in respect of them till the time came, as it now had done, for a general election.

The strict retirement of his life must now give way before the requirements of an election candidate, and he must consent to take the field once more as a public man, or, by abandoning his seat in Parliament, accept a condition of what he knew to be complete obscurity. The old doctor was indeed favorable to the latter course, – the passion for hoarding had gone on increasing with age. Money was, in his estimation, the only species of power above the changes and caprice of the world. Bank-notes were the only things he never knew to deceive; and he took an almost fiendish delight in contrasting the success of his own penurious practices with all the disappointments his son O’Reilly had experienced in his attempts at what he called “high life.” Every slight shown him, each new instance of coldness or aversion of the neighborhood, gave the old man a diabolical pleasure, and seemed to revive his youth in the exercise of a malignant spirit.

O’Reilly’s only hope of reconciling his father to the cost of a new election was in the prospect held out that the seat might at last be secured in perpetuity for Beeeham, and the chance of a rich marriage in England thus provided. Even this view he was compelled to sustain by the assurance that the expense would be a mere trifle, and that, by the adoption of popular principles, he should come in almost for nothing. To make the old doctor a convert to these notions, he had called in Heffernau and O’Halloran, who both, during the dinner, had exerted themselves with their natural tact, and now that the doctor had dropped asleep, were reposing themselves, and recruiting the energies so generously expended.

Hence the party seemed to have a certain gloom and weight over it, as the shadow of coming night fell on the figures seated, almost in silence, around the table. None spoke save an occasional word or two, as they passed round the bottle. Each retreated into his own reflections, and communed with himself. Men who have exhibited themselves to each other, in a game of deceit and trick, seem to have a natural repugnance to any recurrence to the theme when the occasion is once over. Even they whose hearts have the least self-respect will avoid the topic if possible.

“How is the bottle? – with you, I believe,” said O’Reilly to Heffernan, in the low tone to which they had all reduced the conversation.

“I have just filled my glass; it stands with the Counsellor.”

O’Halloran poured out the wine and sipped it slowly. “A very remarkable man,” said he, sententiously, with a slight gesture of his head to the chair where the old doctor lay coiled up asleep. “His faculties seem as clear, and his judgment as acute, as if he were only five-and-forty, and I suppose he must be nearly twice that age.”

“Very nearly,” replied O’Reilly; “he confesses commonly to eighty-six; but when he is weak or querulous, he often says ninety-one or two.”

“His memory is the most singular thing about him,” said Heffernan. “Now, the account of Swift’s appearance in the pulpit with his gown thrust back, and his hands stuck in the belt of his cassock, brow-beating the lord mayor and aldermen for coming in late to church, – it came as fresh as if he were talking of an event of last week.”

“How good the imitation of voice was, too,” added Heffernan: “‘Giving two hours to your dress, and twenty minutes to your devotions, you come into God’s house looking more like mountebanks than Christian men!’”

“I ‘ve seldom seen him so much inclined to talk and chat away as this evening,” said O’Reilly; “but I think you chimed in so well with his humor, it drew him on.”

“There was something of dexterity,” said Heffernan, “in the way he kept bringing up these reminiscences and old stories, to avoid entering upon the subject of the election. I saw that he would n’t approach that theme, no matter how skilfully you brought it forward.”

“You ought not to have alluded to the Darcys, however,” said O’Halloran. “I remarked that the mention of their name gave him evident displeasure; indeed, he soon after pushed his chair back from the table and became silent.”

“He always sleeps after dinner,” observed O’Reilly, carelessly. “It was about his usual time.”

Another pause now succeeded, in which the only sounds heard were the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeper.

“You saw Lord Castlereagh, I think you told me?” said O’Reilly, anxious to lead Heffernan into something like a declaration of opinion.

“Oh, repeatedly; I dined either with him or in his company, three or four times every week of my stay in town.”

“Well, is he satisfied with the success of his measure?” asked O’Halloran, caustically. “Is this Union working to his heart’s content?”

“It is rather early to pass a judgment on that point, I think.”

“I’m not of that mind,” rejoined O’Halloran, hastily. “The fruits of the measure are showing themselves already. The men of fortune are flying the country; their town houses are to let; their horses are advertised for sale at Dycer’s. Dublin is, even now, beginning to feel what it may become when the population has no other support than itself.”

“Such will always be the fortune of a province. Influence will and must converge to the capital,” rejoined Heffernan.

“But what if the great element of a province be wanting? What if we have not that inherent respect and reverence for the metropolis provincials always should feel? What if we know that our interests are misunderstood, our real wants unknown, our peculiar circumstances either undervalued or despised?”

“If the case be as you represent it – ”

“Can you deny it? Tell me that.”

“I will not deny or admit it. I only say, if it be such, there is still a remedy, if men are shrewd enough to adopt it.”

“And what may that remedy be?” said O’Reilly, calmly.

“An Irish party!”

“Oh, the old story; the same plot over again we had this year at the Rotunda?” said O’Reilly, contemptuously.

“Which only failed from our own faults,” added Heffer-nan, angrily. “Some of us were lukewarm and would do nothing; some waited for others to come forward; and some again wanted to make their hard bargain with the minister before they made him feel the necessity of the compact.”

O’Reilly bit his lip in silence, for he well understood at whom this reproof was levelled.

“The cause of failure was very different,” said O’Hallo-ran, authoritatively. “It was one which has dissolved many an association, and rendered many a scheme abortive, and will continue to do so, as often as it occurs. You failed for want of a ‘Principle.’ You had rank and wealth, and influence more than enough to have made your weight felt and acknowledged, but you had no definite object or end. You were a party, and you had not a purpose.”

“Come, come,” said Heffernan, “you are evidently unaware of the nature of our association, and seem not to have read the resolutions we adopted.”

“No, – on the contrary, I read them carefully; there was more than sufficient in them to have made a dozen parties. Had you adopted one steadfast line of action, set out with one brief intelligible proposition, – I care not what, – Slave Emancipation, or Catholic Emancipation, Repeal of Tests Acts, or Parliamentary Reform, any of them, – taken your stand on that, and that alone, you must have succeeded. Of course, to do this is a work of time and labor; some men will grow weary and sink by the way, but others take up the burden, and the goal is reached at last There must be years long of writing and speaking, meeting, declaring, and plotting; you must consent to be thought vulgar and low-minded, – ay, and to become so, for active partisans are only to be found in low places. You will be laughed at and jeered, abused, mocked, and derided at first; later on, you will be assailed more powerfully and more coarsely; but, all this while, your strength is developing, your agencies are spreading. Persuasion will induce some, notoriety others, hopes of advantage many more, to join you. You will then have a press as well as a party, and the very men that sneered at your beginnings will have to respect the persistence and duration of your efforts. I don’t care how trumpery the arguments used; I don’t value one straw the fallacy of the statements put forward. Let one great question, one great demand for anything, be made for some five-and-twenty or thirty years, – let the Press discuss, and the Parliament debate it, – you are sure of its being accorded in the end. Now, it will be a party ambitious of power that will buy your alliance at any price; now, a tottering Government anxious to survive the session and reach the snug harbor of the long vacation. Now, it will be the high ‘bid’ of a popular administration; now, it will be the last hope of second-rate capacities, ready to supply their own deficiencies by incurring a hazard. However it come, you are equally certain of it.”

There was a pause as O’Halloran concluded. Heffernan saw plainly to what the Counsellor pointed, and that he was endeavoring to recruit for that party of which he destined the future leadership for himself, and Con had no fancy to serve in the ranks of such an army. O’Reilly, who thought that the profession of a popular creed might be serviceable in the emergency of an election, looked with more favor on the exposition, and after a brief interval said, —

“Well, supposing I were to see this matter in your light, what support could you promise me? I mean at the hustings.”

“Most of the small freeholders, now, – all of them, in time; the priests to a man, the best election agents that ever canvassed a constituency. By degrees the forces will grow stronger, according to the length and breadth of the principle you adopt, – make it emancipation, and I ‘ll insure you a lease of the county.” Heffernan smiled dubiously. “Ah, never mind Mr. Heffernan’s look; these notions don’t suit him. He ‘s one of the petty traders in politics, who like small sales and quick returns.”

“Such dealing makes fewest bankrupts,” said Heffernan, coolly.

“I own to you,” said O’Halloran, “the rewards are distant, but they ‘re worth waiting for. It is not the miserable bribe of a situation, or a title, both beneath what they would accord to some state apothecary; but power, actual power, and real patronage are in the vista.”

A heavy sigh and a rustling sound in the deep armchair announced that the doctor was awaking, and after a few struggles to throw off the drowsy influence, he sat upright, and made a gesture that he wished for wine.

“We ‘ve been talking about political matters, sir,” said O’Reilly. “I hope we didn’t disturb your doze?”

“No; I was sleeping sound,” croaked the old man, in a feeble whine, “and I had a very singular dream! I dreamed I was sitting in a great kitchen of a big house, and there was a very large, hairy turnspit sitting opposite to me, in a nook beside the fire, turning a big spit with a joint of meat on it. ‘Who’s the meat for?’ says I to him. ‘For my Lord Castlereagh,’ says he, ‘devil a one else.’ ‘For himself alone?’ says I. ‘Just so,’ says he; ‘don’t you know that’s the Irish Parliament that we ‘re roasting and basting, and when it’s done,’ says he, ‘we ‘ll sarve it up to be carved.’ ‘And who are you?’ says I to the turnspit. ‘I’m Con Heffernan,’ says he; ‘and the devil a bit of the same meat I ‘m to get, after cooking it till my teeth ‘s watering.’”

A loud roar of laughter from O’Halloran, in which Heffernan endeavored to take a part, met this strange revelation of the doctor’s sleep, nor was it for a considerable time after that the conversation could be resumed without some jesting allusion of the Counsellor to the turnspit and his office.

“Your dream tallies but ill, sir, with the rumors through Dublin,” said O’Reilly, whose quick glance saw through the mask of indifference by which Heffernan concealed his irritation.

“I did n’t hear it. What was it, Bob?”

“That the ministry had offered our friend here the secretaryship for Ireland.”

“Sure, if they did – ” He was about to add, “That he ‘d have as certainly accepted it,” when a sense of the impropriety of such a speech arrested the words.

“You are mistaken, sir,” interposed Heffernan, answering the unspoken sentence. “I did refuse. The conditions on which I accorded my humble support to the bill of the Union have been shamefully violated, and I could not, if I even wished it, accept office from a Government that have been false to their pledges.”

“You see my dream was right, after all,” chuckled the old man. “I said they kept him working away in the kitchen, and gave him none of the meat afterwards.”

“What if I had been stipulating for another, sir?” said Heffernan, with a forced smile. “What if the breach of faith I allude to had reference not to me, but to your son yonder, for whom, and no other, I asked – I will not say a favor, but a fair and reasonable acknowledgment of the station he occupies?”

“Ah, that weary title!” exclaimed the doctor, crankily. “What have we to do with these things?”

“You are right, sir,” chimed in O’Halloran. “Your present position, self-acquired and independent, is a far prouder one than any to be obtained by ministerial favor.”

“I ‘d rather he’d help us to crush these Darcys,” said the old man, as his eyes sparkled and glistened like the orbs of a serpent. “I ‘d rather my Lord Castlereagh would put his heel upon them than stretch out the hand to us.”

“What need to trouble your head about them?” said Heffernan, conciliatingly; “they are low enough in all conscience now.”

“My father means,” said O’Reilly, “that he is tired and sick of the incessant appeals to law this family persist in following; that these trials irritate and annoy him.”

“Come sir,” cried O’Halloran, encouragingly, “you shall see the last of them in a few weeks. I have reason to know that an old maiden sister of Bagenal Daly’s has supplied Bicknell with the means of the present action. It’s the last shot in the locker. We ‘ll take care to make the gun recoil on the hand that fires it.”

“Darcy and Daly are both out of the country,” observed the old man, cunningly.

“We ‘ll call them up for judgment, however,” chimed in O’Halloran. “That same Daly is one of those men who infested our country in times past, and by the mere recklessness of their hold on life, bullied and oppressed all who came before them. I am rejoiced to have an opportunity of showing up such a character.”

“I wish we had done with them all,” sighed the doctor.

“So you shall, with this record. Will you pledge yourself not to object to the election expenses if I gain you the verdict?”

“Come, that’s a fair offer,” said Heffernan, laughing.

“Maybe, they ‘ll come to ten thousand,” said the doctor, cautiously.

“Not above one half the sum, if Mr. O’Reilly will consent to take my advice.”

“And why wouldn’t he?” rejoined the old man, querulously. “What signifies which side he takes, if it saves the money?”

“Is it a bargain, then?”

“Will you secure me against more trials at law? Will you pledge yourself that I am not to be tormented by these anxieties and cares?”

“I can scarcely promise that much; but I feel so assured that your annoyance will end here, that I am willing to pledge myself to give you my own services without fee or reward in future, if any action follow this one.”

“I think that is most generous,” said Heffernan.

“It is as much as saying, he ‘ll enter into recognizances for an indefinite series of five-hundred-pound briefs,” added O’Reilly.

“Done, then. I take you at your word,” said the doctor; while stretching forth his lean and trembling hand, he grasped the nervous fingers of the Counsellor in token of ratification.

“And now woe to the Darcys!” muttered O’Halloran, as he arose to say good-night, Heffernan arose at the same time, resolved to accompany the Counsellor, and try what gentle persuasion could effect in the modification of views which he saw were far too explicit to be profitable.