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

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СКАЧАТЬ although no competitor was bold enough to dispute the prize with him, he was obliged to submit to the ordeal. It is rarely that the public vouchsafes any interest in the details of University honors; but this case proved an exception, and almost every journal of the capital alluded in terms of high paneygric to the splendid display he made on that occasion.

      In the very midst of these triumphs, young Nelligan arrived at his father’s house in Oughterard, to enjoy the gratification his success had diffused at home, and rest himself after his severe labors. Little as old Pat Nelligan of his neighbors knew of University honors, or the toil which won them, there was enough in the very publicity of his son’s career to make him a proud man. He at least knew that Joe had beaten them all; that none could hold a candle to him; “that for nigh a century such answering had not been heard on the bench.” This was the expression of a Dublin journal, coupled with the partisan regret that, by the bigoted statutes of the college, genius of such order should be denied the privilege of obtaining a fellowship.

      If young Nelligan retired, half in pride, half in bashful-ness, from the notice of society in Dublin, he was assuredly little disposed to enter into the gayeties and dissipations of a small country-town existence. The fulsome adulation of some, the stupid astonishment of others, but, worse than either, the vulgar assumption that his success was a kind of party triumph, – a blow dealt by the plebeian against the patrician, the Papist against the Protestant, – shocked and disgusted him, and he was glad to leave Oughterard and accompany his mother to the seaside. She was an invalid of some years’ standing, – a poor, frail, simple-hearted creature, who, after a long, struggling life of hardship and toil, saw herself in affluence and comfort, and yet could not bring her mind to believe it true. As little could she comprehend the strange fact of Joe’s celebrity; of his name figuring in newspapers, and his health being drunk at a public dinner in his native town. To her he was invaluable; the very tenderest of nurses, and the best of all companions. She did n’t care for books, even those of the most amusing kind; but she loved to hear the little gossip of the place where the neighbors passed the evening; what topics they discussed; who had left and who had arrived, and every other little incident of their uneventful lives. Simple and easy of execution as such an office might have been to a kindred spirit, to Joseph Nelligan it proved no common labor. And certain it is that the mistakes he committed in names, and the blunders he fell into as regarded events, rather astonished his mother, and led that good lady to believe that Trinity College must not have been fertile in genius when poor Joe was regarded as one of the great luminaries of his time. “Ah,” would she say, “if he had his father’s head it would be telling him! but, poor boy, he remembers nothing!”

      This digression – far longer than I cared to make it, but which has grown to its present extent under my hands – will explain young Nelligan’s presence at Mrs. Cronan’s “Tea,” where already a number of other notables had now assembled, and were gracefully dispersed through the small rooms which formed her apartment. Play of various kinds formed the chief amusement of the company; and while the whist-table, in decorous gravity, held the chief place in the sitting-room, a laughing round game occupied the kitchen, and a hardly contested “hit” of backgammon was being fought out on the bed, where, for lack of furniture, the combatants had established themselves.

      The success of an evening party is not always proportionate to the means employed to secure it. Very splendid salons, costly furniture, and what newspapers call “all the delicacies of the season,” are occasionally to be found in conjunction with very dull company; while a great deal of enjoyment and much social pleasure are often to be met with where the material resources have been of the fewest and most simple kind. On the present occasion there was a great deal of laughing, and a fair share of love-making; some scolding at whist, and an abundance of scandal, at least of that cut-and-thrust-at character which amuses the speakers themselves, and is never supposed to damage those who are the object of it. All the company who had frequented the port – as Kilkieran was called – during the season were passed in review, and a number of racy anecdotes interchanged about their rank, morals, fortune, and pretensions. A very general impression seemed to prevail that in the several points of climate, scenery, social advantages, and amusements, Kilkieran might stand a favorable comparison with the first watering-places, not alone of England, but the Continent; and after various discursive reasons why its fame had not equalled its deserts, there was an almost unanimous declaration of opinion that the whole fault lay with the Martins; not, indeed, that the speakers were very logical in their arguments, since some were heard to deplore the change from the good old times, when everybody was satisfied to live anywhere and anyhow, when there was no road to the place but a bridle-path, not a loaf of bread to be had within twelve miles, no post-office; while others eloquently expatiated on all that might have been, and yet was not done.

      “We tried to get up a little news-room,” said Captain Bodkin, “and I went to Martin myself about it, but he hum’d and ha’d, and said, until people subscribed for the Dispensary he thought they needn’t mind newspapers.”

      “Just like him,” said Mrs. Cronan; “but, indeed, I think it’s my Lady does it all.”

      “I differ from you, ma’am,” said Miss Busk, with a bland smile; “I attribute the inauspicious influence to another.”

      “You mean Miss Martin?” said Mrs. Cronan.

      “Just so, ma’am; indeed, I have reason to know I am correct. This time two years it was I went over to Cro’ Martin House to propose opening ‘my Emporium’ for the season at the port. I thought it was due to the owners of the estate, and due to myself also,” added Miss Busk, majestically, “to state my views about a measure so intimately associated with the – the – in fact, what I may call the interests of civilization. I had just received my plates of the last fashions from Dublin, – you may remember them, ma’am; I showed them to you at Mrs. Cullenane’s – well, when I was in the very middle of my explanation, who should come into the room but Miss Martin – ”

      “Dressed in the old brown riding-habit?” interposed a fat old lady with one eye.

      “Yes, Mrs. Few, in the old brown riding-habit. She came up to the table, with a saucy laugh in her face, and said, ‘Why, uncle, are you going to give a fancy ball?’

      “‘It is the last arrival from Paris, miss,’ said I; ‘the Orleans mantle, which, though not a “costume de Chasse,” is accounted very becoming.’

      “‘Ah, you ‘re laughing at my old habit, Miss Busk,’ said she, seeing how I eyed her; ‘and it really is very shabby, but I intend to give Dan Leary a commission to replace it one of these days.’”

      “Dan Leary, of the Cross-roads!” exclaimed Captain Bodkin, laughing.

      “I pledge you my word of honor, sir, she said it. ‘And as to all this finery, Miss Busk,’ said she, turning over the plates with her whip, ‘it would be quite unsuitable to our country, our climate, and our habits; not to say, that the Orleans mantle would be worn with an ill grace when our people are going half naked!’”

      “Positively indecent! downright indelicate!” shuddered Mrs. Cronan.

      “And did Martin agree with her?” asked the Captain.

      “I should like to know when he dared to do otherwise. Why, between my lady and the niece he can scarcely call his life his own.”

      “They say he has a cruel time of it,” sighed Mr. Clinch, the revenue-officer, who had some personal experience of domestic slavery.

      “Tush, – nonsense!” broke in his wife. “I never knew one of those hen-pecked creatures that was n’t a tyrant in his family. I ‘ll engage, if the truth were known, Lady Dorothy has the worst of it.”

      “Faith, and he’s much altered from what he was when a boy, if any one СКАЧАТЬ