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

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Fagan waited till MacNaghten was out of hearing, and then turned angrily towards his daughter.

      “You have given him a sorry specimen of your breeding, Polly; I thought, indeed, you would have known better.”

      “You forget already, then, the speech with which he accosted us,” said she, haughtily; “but my memory is better, sir.”

      “His courtesy might have effaced the recollection, I think,” said Fagan, testily.

      “His courtesy! Has he not told you himself that every gift he possesses is but an emanation of his selfishness? The man who can be anything so easily, will be nothing if it cost a sacrifice.”

      “I don’t care what he is,” said Fagan, in a low, distinct voice, as though he wanted every word to be heard attentively. “For what he has been, and what he will be, I care just as little. It is where he moves, and lives, and exerts influence, – these are what concern me.”

      “Are the chance glimpses that we catch of that high world so attractive, father?” said she, in an accent of almost imploring eagerness. “Do they, indeed, requite us for the cost we pay for them? When we leave the vulgar circle of our equals, is it to hear of generous actions, exalted sentiments, high-souled motives; or is it not to find every vice that stains the low pampered up into greater infamy amongst the noble?”

      “This is romance and folly, girl. Who ever dreamed it should be otherwise? Nature stamped no nobility on gold, nor made copper plebeian. This has been the work of men; and so of the distinctions among themselves, and it will not do for us to dispute the ordinance. Station is power, wealth is power; he who has neither, is but a slave; he who has both, may be all that he would be!”

      A sudden gesture to enforce caution followed these words; and at the same time MacNaghten’s merry voice was heard, singing as he came along, —

      “‘Kneel down there, and say a prayer,

      Before my hounds shall eat you.’

      ‘I have no prayer,’ the Fox replied,

      ‘For I was bred a Quaker.’

      “All right, Miss Polly. Out of compliment to you, I suppose, Kitty Dwyer, that would never suffer a collar over her head for the last six weeks, has consented to be harnessed as gently as a lamb; and my own namesake, ‘Dan the Smasher,’ has been traced up, without as much as one strap broken. They ‘re a little pair I have been breaking in for Carew; for he’s intolerably lazy, and expects to find his nags trained to perfection. Look at them, how they come along, – no bearing reins, no blinkers. That ‘s what I call a very neat turn-out.”

      The praise was, assuredly, not unmerited, as two highbred black ponies swept past with a beautiful phaeton, and drew up at the door of the conservatory.

      The restless eyes, the wide-spread nostrils and quivering flanks of the animals, not less than the noiseless caution of the grooms at their heads, showed that their education had not yet been completed; and so Fagan remarked at once.

      “They look rakish, – there’s no denying it!” said Mac-Naghten; “but they are gentleness itself. The only difficulty is to put the traps on them; once fairly on, there’s nothing to apprehend. You are not afraid of them, Miss Polly?” said he, with a strong emphasis on the “you.”

      “When you tell me that I need not be, I have no fears,” said she, calmly.

      “I must be uncourteous enough to say that I do not concur in the sentiment,” said Fagan; “and, with your leave, Mr. MacNaghten, we will walk.”

      “Walk! why, to see anything, you’ll have twelve miles a-foot. It must n’t be thought of, Miss Polly, – I cannot hear of it!” She bowed, as though in half assent; and he continued: “Thanks for the confidence; you shall see it is not misplaced. Now, Fagan – ”

      “I am decided, Mr. MacNaghten; I’ll not venture; nor will I permit my daughter to risk her life.”

      “Neither would I, I should hope,” said MacNaghten; and, although the words were uttered with something of irritation, there was that in the tone that made Polly blush deeply.

      “It’s too bad, by Jove!” muttered he, half aloud, “when a man has so few things that he really can do, to deny his skill in the one he knows best.”

      “I am quite ready, sir,” said Polly, in that tone of determination which she was often accustomed to assume, and against which her father rarely or never disputed.

      “There now, Fagan, get up into the rumble. I ‘ll not ask you to be the coachman. Come, come, – no more opposition; we shall make them impatient if we keep them standing much longer.”

      As he spoke, he offered his arm to Polly, who, with a smile, – the first she had deigned to give him, – accepted it, and then, hastily leading her forward, he handed her into the carriage. In an instant MacNaghten was beside her. With the instinct of hot-tempered cattle, they no sooner felt a hand upon the reins than they became eager to move forward, and, while one pawed the ground with impatience, the other, retiring to the very limit of the pole-strap, prepared for a desperate plunge.

      “Up with you, Fagan; be quick – be quick!” cried Dan. “It won’t do to hold them in. Let them go, lads, or they ‘ll smash everything!” and the words were hardly out, when, with a tremendous bound, that carried the front wheels off the road, away they went. “Meet us at the other gate, – they ‘ll show you the way,” cried MacNaghten, as, standing up, he pointed with his whip in the direction he meant. He had no time for more; for all his attention was now needed to the horses, as, each exciting the other, they dashed madly on down the road.

      “This comes of keeping them standing,” muttered Dan; “and the scoundrels have curbed them up too tight. You’re not afraid, Miss Polly? By Jove, that was a dash, – Kitty showed her heels over the splash-board. Look at that devil Dan, – see how he ‘s bearing on the pole-piece! – an old trick of his.”

      A tremendous cut on his flank now drove him almost furious, and the enraged animal set off at speed.

      “We must let them blow themselves, Miss Polly. It all comes of their standing so long. You’re not afraid? – Well, then, they may do their worst.”

      By this time the pace had become a tearing gallop, and seeing that nothing short of some miles would suffice to tame them down, MacNaghten turned their heads in the direction of a long avenue which led towards the sea.

      It was all in vain that Fagan fastened through the flower-garden, and across a private shrubbery; when he reached the “gate,” there was no sign of the phaeton. The cuckoo and the thrush were the only voices heard in the stillness; and, at intervals, the deep booming of the sea, miles distant, told how unbroken was the silence around. His mind was a conflict of fear and anger; terrible anxieties for his daughter were mixed up with passion at this evidence of her wayward nature, and he walked along, reproaching himself bitterly for having accepted the civilities of MacNaghten.

      Fagan’s own schemes for a high alliance for his daughter had made him acquainted with many a counterplot of adventurers against himself. He well knew what a prize Polly Fagan was deemed amongst the class of broken-down and needy spendthrifts who came to him for aid. Often and often had he detected the first steps of such machinations, till at length he had become suspectful of everything and everybody. Now, MacNaghten was exactly the kind of man he most dreaded in this respect. There was that recklessness about him that comes of broken fortune; he was the very type of a desperate adventurer, ready to seize СКАЧАТЬ