Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ that we kept it for the winter nights; we agreed Tieck and Chamisso were better for summer evenings – ‘Quando ridono i prati,’ as Petrarch says;” and her eyes brightened, and her cheek glowed as he spoke. “How beautiful was that walk we took on Sunday evening last! That little glen beside the river, so silent, so still, who could think it within a mile or two of a great city? What a delightful thing it is to think, Polly, that they who labor hard in the week – and there are so many of them! – can yet on that one day of rest wander forth and taste of the earth’s freshness.

      “‘L; oro e le perle – i fîor vermegli ed i bianchi.’”

      “Confound your balderdash!” cried Fagan, passionately; “you’ve put me out in the tot – seventeen and twelve, twenty-nine – two thousand nine hundred pounds, with the accruing interest. I don’t see that he has added the interest.”

      Mr. Crowther bent patiently over the document for a few minutes, and then, taking off his spectacles, and wiping them slowly, said, in his blandest voice: “It appears to me that Mr. Raper has omitted to calculate the interest. Perhaps he would kindly vouchsafe us his attention for a moment.”

      Raper was, however, at that moment deaf to all such appeals; his spirit was as though wandering free beneath the shade of leafy bowers or along the sedgy banks of some clear lake.

      “You remember Dante’s lines, Polly, and how he describes —

      “‘La divina foresta —

      Che agli occhi tempera va il nuovo giorno,

      Senza piu aspettar lasciai la riva,

      Preudendo la campagna lento lento.’

      How beautiful the repetition of the word ‘lento;’ how it conveys the slow reluctance of his step!”

      “There is, to my thinking, even a more graceful instance in Metastasio,” said Polly: —

      “‘L’ onda che mormora, Fra sponda e sponda, L’ aura che tremola, Fra fronda e fronda.”

      “Raper, Raper, – do you hear me, I say?” cried Fagan, as he knocked angrily with his knuckles on the table.

      “We are sorry, Miss Fagan,” interposed Crowther, “to interrupt such intellectual pleasure, but business has its imperative claims.”

      “I ‘m ready – quite ready, sir,” said Joe, rising in confusion, and hastening across the room to where the others sat.

      “Take a seat, sir,” said Fagan, peremptorily; “for here are some points which require full explanation. And I would beg to remind you that if the cultivation of your mind, as I have heard it called, interferes with your attention to office duties, it would be as well to seek out some more congenial sphere for its development than my humble house. I’m too poor a man for such luxurious dalliance, Mr. Raper.” These words, although spoken in a whisper, were audible to him to whom they were addressed, and he heard them in a state of half-stupefied amazement. “For the present, I must call your attention to this. What is it?”

      Raper was no sooner in the midst of figures and calculations than all his instincts of office-life recalled him to himself, and he began rapidly but clearly to explain the strange and confused-looking documents which were strewn before him, and Crowther could not but feel struck by the admirable memory and systematic precision which alone could derive information from such disorderly materials. Even Fagan himself was so carried away by a momentary impulse of enthusiasm as to say, “When a man is capable of such a statement at this, what a disgrace that he should fritter away his faculties with rhymes and legends!”

      “Mr. Raper is a philosopher, sir; he despises the base pursuits and grovelling ambitions of us lower mortals,” said Crowther, with a well-feigned humility.

      “We must beg of him to lay aside his philosophy, then, for this evening, for there is much to be done yet,” said Fagan, untying a large bundle of letters. “This is the correspondence of the last year, – the most important of all.”

      “Large sums! large sums, these!” said Crowther, glancing his eyes over the papers. “You appear to have placed a most unlimited confidence in this young gentleman, – a very well merited trust, I have no doubt.”

      Fagan made no reply, but a slight contortion of his mouth and eyebrows seemed to offer some dissent to the doctrine.

      “I have kept the tea waiting for you, Papa Joe,” said Polly, who took the opportunity of a slight pause to address him; and Raper, like an escaped schoolboy, burst away from his task at a word.

      “I have just remembered another instance, Polly,” said he, “of what we were speaking; it occurs in Schiller, —

      “‘Es bricht sich die Wellen mit Macht – mit Macht.’”

      “Take your books to your room, Polly,” said Fagan, harshly; “for I see that as long as they are here, we have little chance of Mr. Raper’s services.”

      Polly rose, and pressed Joe’s hand affectionately, and then, gathering up the volumes before her, she left the room. Raper stood for a second or two gazing at the door after her departure, and then, heaving a faint sigh, muttered to himself: —

      “I have just recalled to mind another, —

      “‘Eine Blüth’, eine Blüth’ mir brich,

      Vom den Baum im Garten.’

      Quite ready, sir,” broke he in suddenly, as a sharp summons from Fagan’s knuckles once more admonished him of his duty; and now, as though the link which had bound him to realms of fancy was snapped, he addressed himself to his task with all the patient drudgery of daily habit.

      CHAPTER VI. TWO FRIENDS AND THEIR CONFIDENCES

      By the details of my last two chapters, I have been obliged to recede, as it were, from the due course of my story, and speak of events which occurred prior to those mentioned in a former chapter; but this irregularity was a matter of necessity, since I could not pursue the narrative of my father’s life without introducing to the reader certain characters who, more or less, exerted an influence on his fortunes. Let me now, however, turn to my tale, from which it is my intention in future to digress as seldom as possible. A few lines, written in haste, had summoned MacNaghten to Castle Carew, on the morning of that Friday for which my father had invited his friends to dinner. With all his waywardness, and all the weaknesses of an impulsive nature, Dan MacNaghten stood higher in my father’s esteem than any other of his friends. It was not alone that he had given my father the most signal proofs of his friendship, but that, throughout his whole career, marked as it was by folly and rashness, and the most thoughtless extravagance, he had never done a single action that reflected on his reputation as a man of honor, nor, in all the triumphs of his prosperous days, or in the trials of his adverse ones, had be forfeited the regard of any who knew him. My father had intrusted to him, during his absence, everything that could be done without correspondence; for amongst Dan’s characteristics. none was more remarkable than his horror of letter-writing; and it was a popular saying of the time “that Dan MacNaghten would rather fight two duels than write one challenge.” Of course, it may be imagined how much there was for two such friends to talk over when they met, for if my father’s letters were few and brief, MacNaghten’s were still fewer and less explicit, leaving voids on either side that nothing but a meeting could supply.

      Early, therefore, that Friday morning, Dan’s gig and mottled gray, the last remnant of an extensive stable establishment, rattled up the avenue of Castle Carew, and MacNaghten strolled into the garden to loiter about till such СКАЧАТЬ