The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. I (of II). Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ the possessor. Mr. Massingbred had forgotten but one thing in all the arrangement of this affair, which was to apprise his son of it beforehand, and make him, as it were, a part of the plot. That one omission, however, was enough to secure its failure.

      Jack received the first tidings of the scheme when it was a fact, not a speculation. It was a thing done, not to do, and consequently a “gross piece of domestic cruelty to dispose of him and his future by an arbitrary banishment to a distant land, linking him with distasteful duties, uncongenial associates,” and the rest of it. In a word, it was a case for resistance, and he did resist, and in no very measured fashion, either. He wrote back a pettish and ill-tempered refusal of the place, sneered at the class by whom such appointments were regarded as prizes, and coolly said that “it was quite time enough to attach himself to the serious business of life when he had tasted something of the pleasures that suited his time of life; besides,” added he, “I must see which way my ambitions point; perhaps to a seat on the Treasury benches, perhaps to a bullock-team, a wood-axe, and a rifle in a new settlement. Of my resolves on either head, or on anything between them, you shall have the earliest possible intimation from your devoted, but perhaps not very obedient, to command,

      “J. M.”

      His father rejoined angrily and peremptorily. The place had cost him everything he could employ or enlist of friendly patronage; he made the request assume all the weight of a deep personal obligation, and now the solicitation and the success were all to go for nothing. What if he should leave so very gifted a young gentleman to the unfettered use of his great abilities? What if he abstained from any interference with one so competent to guide himself? He threw out these suggestions too palpably to occasion any misconception, and Jack read them aright. “I’m quite ready for sea whenever you are pleased to cut the painter,” said he; and the correspondence concluded with a dry intimation that two hundred a year, less than one half of his former allowance, should be paid into Coutts’s for his benefit, but that no expenditure above that sum would be repaid by his father.

      “I ‘ll emigrate; I ‘ll agitate; I ‘ll turn author, and write for the reviews; I ‘ll correspond with the newspapers; I ‘ll travel in Afrifca; I ‘ll go to sea, – be a pirate;” in fact, there was nothing for which he thought his capacity unequal, nor anything against which his principles would revolt. In speculation, only, however; for in sober reality he settled down into a mere idler, discontented, dreamy, and unhappy.

      Little momentary bursts of energy would drive him now and then to his books, and for a week or two he would work really hard; when a change as sudden would come over him, and he would relapse into his former apathy. Thus was it that he had lived for some time after the term had come to an end, and scarcely a single student lingered within the silent courts. Perhaps the very solitude was the great charm of the place; there was that in his lonely, unfriended, uncompanionable existence that seemed to feed the brooding melancholy in which he indulged with all the ardor of a vice. He liked to think himself an outcast and forgotten. It was a species of flattery that he addressed to his own heart when he affected to need neither sympathy nor affection. Still his was not the stuff of which misanthropy is fashioned, and he felt acutely the silence of his friend Nelligan, who had never once written to him since they parted.

      “I ‘d scarcely have left him here,” said he to himself one day; “had he been in my position, I ‘d hardly have quitted him under such circumstances. He knew all about my quarrel with my father. He had read our letters on each side. To be sure he had condemned me, and taken the side against me; still, when there was a breach, and that breach offered no prospect of reconciliation, it was but scant friendship to say good-bye, and desert me. He might, at least, have asked me down to his house. I ‘d not have gone; that ‘s certain. I feel myself very poor company for myself, and I ‘d not inflict my stupidity upon others. Still, he might have thought it kind or generous. In fact, in such a case I would have taken no refusal; I’d have insisted.”

      What a dangerous hypothesis it is when we assume to act for another; how magnanimously do we rise above all meaner motives, and only think of what is generous and noble; how completely we discard every possible contingency that could sway us from the road of duty, and neither look right nor left on our way to some high object! Jack Massingbred, arguing thus, ended by thinking himself a very fine fellow and his friend a very shabby one, – two conclusions that, strangely enough, did not put him into half as much good-humor with the world as he expected. At all events, he felt very sore with Nelligan, and had he known where to address him, would have written a very angry epistle of mock gratitude for all his solicitude in his behalf; very unfortunately, however, he did not know in what part of Ireland the other resided, nor did his acquaintance with provincial dialect enable him to connect his friend with a western county. He had so confidently expected to hear from him, that he had never asked a question as to his whereabouts. Thus was it with Massingbred, as he sauntered along the silent alleys of the College Park, in which, at rare intervals, some solitary sizar might be met with, – spare, sad-looking figures, – in whose features might be read the painful conflict of narrow fortune and high ambition. Book in hand generally, they rarely exchanged a look as he passed them; and Massingbred scanned at his ease these wasted and careworn sons of labor, wondering within himself was “theirs the right road to fortune.”

      Partly to shake off the depression that was over him by change of place, and in part to see something of the country itself, Massingbred resolved to make a walking-tour through the south and west of Ireland, and with a knapsack on his back, he started one fine autumn morning for Wicklow.

      CHAPTER VIII. SOME KNOTTY POINTS THAT PUZZLED JOE NELLIGAN

      This true history contains no record of the evening Mr. Scanlan passed at the Osprey’s Nest; nor is it probable that in any diary kept by that intelligent individual there will yet be found materials to supply this historical void. Whether, therefore, high events and their consequences were discussed, or that the meeting was only devoted to themes of lighter importance, is likely to remain a secret to all time. That matters beneath the range of politics occupied the consideration of the parties was, however, evident from the following few lines of a note received by young Nelligan the next morning: —

      “Dear Joe, – I dined yesterday at the ‘Nest,’ and we talked much of you. What would you think of paying a visit there this morning to see the picture, or anything else you can think of? I ‘ve a notion it would be well taken. At all events, come over and speak to me here.

      “Ever yours,

      “M. SCANLAN.”

      “I scarcely understand your note, Maurice,” said young Nelligan, as he entered the little room where the other sat at breakfast.

      “Have you breakfasted?” said Scanlan.

      “Yes, an hour ago.”

      “Will you taste that salmon? Well, then, just try Poll Hanigan’s attempt at a grouse-pie; let me tell you, there is genius in the very ambition; she got the receipt from the cook at Cro’ Martin, and the imitation is highly creditable. You ‘re wrong to decline it.” And he helped himself amply as he spoke.

      “But this note?” broke in the other, half impatiently.

      “Oh – ay – the note; I ‘m sure I forget what I wrote; what was it about? Yes, to be sure, I remember now. I want you to make yourself known, up there. It is downright folly, if not worse, to be keeping up these feuds and differences in Ireland any longer; such a course might suit the small politicians of Oughterard, but you and I know better, and Martin himself knows better.”

      “But I never took any part in the conflict you speak of; I lived out of it, – away from it.”

      “And are therefore, exactly suited to repair a breach to which you never contributed. I assure you, my boy, СКАЧАТЬ