Charles Lever - One Of Them

“Bad luck to them for Tories!” muttered he, as he threw the crumpled document from him. “I ‘d have been well off to-day if it was n’t for them. There’s no telling the money the contested elections cost me, while, to make out that I was a patriot, I could n’t take a place, but had to go on voting and voting out of the purity of my motives. It was an evil hour when I took to politics at all. Joe! Joe!” cried he, aloud, following up the appeal with a shrill whistle.

“Tear and ages, sure the house isn’t on fire!” said a man, rushing into the room with an air and manner that little indicated the respect due from a servant to his master; “not to say,” added he, “that it’s not dacent or becomin’ to whistle after me, as if I was a tarrier or a bull-dog.”

“Hold your prate, will you?” said Mr. O’Shea.

“Why would I? ‘Tis humiliated I am before all in the place.”

“Will you hold your prate?” muttered his master, in a deeper tone, while, stretching forth his hand, he seemed in search of any missile to hurl at his mutinous follower.

“If I do, then, it’s undher protest, mind that I put it on record that I ‘m only yieldin’ to the ‘vis magiory.’”

“What o’clock is it?” yawned out O’Shea.

“It wants a trifle of four o’clock.”

“And the day, – what’s it like?”

“Blazin’ hot – hotter than yesterday – ‘hotter than New Orleens,’ Mr. Quackinbosh says.”

“D – n Mr. Quackinbosh, and New Orleens too!” growled out O’Shea.

“With all my heart. He’s always laughing at what he calls my Irish, as if it was n’t better than his English.”

“Any strangers arrived?”

“Devil a one. Ould Pagnini says he ‘ll be ruined entirely; there never was such a set, he says, in the house before, – nothing called for but the reg’lar meals, and no wine but the drink of the country, that is n’t wine at all.”

“He’s an insolent scoundrel!”

“He is not. He is the dacentest man I seen since I come to Italy.”

“Will you hold your prate, or do you want me to kick you downstairs?”

“I do not!” said he, with a stern doggedness that was almost comic.

“Did you order breakfast?”

“I did, when I heard you screech out. ‘There he is,’ said ould Pan; ‘I wish he ‘d be in the same hurry to call for his bill.’”

“Insolent rascal! Did you blacken his eye?”

“I did not”

“What did you do, then?”

“I did nothing.”

“What did you say? You’re ready enough with a bad tongue when it’s not called for, – what did you say?”

“I said people called for their bills when they were lavin’ a house, and too lucky you ‘ll be, says I, if he pays it when he calls for it.”

This seemed too much for Mr. O’Shea’s endurance, for he sprang out of bed and hurled a heavy old olive-wood inkstand at his follower. Joe, apparently habituated to such projectiles, speedily ducked his head, and the missile struck the frame of an old looking-glass, and carried away a much-ornamented but very frail chandelier at its side.

“There’s more of it,” said Joe. “Damage to furniture in settin’-room, forty-six pauls and a half.” With this sage reflection, he pushed the fragments aside with his foot, and then, turning to the door, he took from the hands of a waiter the tray containing his master’s breakfast, arranging it deliberately before him with the most unbroken tranquillity of demeanor.

“Did n’t you say it was chocolate I’d have instead of coffee?” said O’Shea, angrily.

“I did not; they grumble enough about sending up anything, and I was n’t goin’ to provoke them,” said Joe, calmly.

“No letters, I suppose, but this?”

“Sorra one.”

“What’s going on below?” asked he, in a more lively tone, as though dismissing an unpleasant theme. “Any one come, – anything doing?”

“Nothing; they ‘re all off to that villa to spend the day, and not to be back till late at night.”

“Stupid fun, after all; the road is roasting, and the place, when you get there, not worth the trouble; but they ‘re so proud of visiting a baronet, that’s the whole secret of it, those vulgar Morgans and that Yankee fellow.”

These mutterings he continued while he went on dressing, and though not intended to be addressed to Joe, he was in no wise disconcerted when that free-and-easy individual replied to them.

“‘Your master ‘s not coming with us, I believe,’ said Mrs. Morgan to me. ‘I’m sure, however, there must have been a mistake. It ‘s so strange that he got no invitation.’

“‘But he did, ma’am,’ says I; ‘he got a card like the rest.’”

“Well done, Joe; a lie never choked you. Go on,” cried O’Shea, laughing.

“‘But you see, ma’am,’ says I, ‘my master never goes anywhere in that kind of promiscuous way. He expects to be called on and trated with “differince,” as becomes a member of Parliament – ’

“‘For Ireland?’ says she.

“‘Yes, ma’am,’ says I. ‘We haven’t as many goats there as in other parts I ‘m tould of, nor the females don’t ride straddle legs, with men’s hats on thim.’”

“You didn’t say that?” burst in O’Shea, with a mock severity.

“I did, and more, – a great deal more. What business was it of hers that you were not asked to the picnic? What had she to say to it? Why did she follow me down the street the other morning, and stay watching all the time I was in at the banker’s, and though, when I came out, I made believe I was stuffin’ the bank-notes into my pocket, I saw by the impudent laugh on her face that she knew I got nothing?”

“By the way, you never told me what Twist and Trover said.”

“I did.”

“Well, what was it? Tell it again,” said O’Shea, angrily.

“Mr. Trover said, ‘Of course, whatever your master wants, just step in there and show it to Mr. Twist;’ and Mr. Twist said, ‘Are you here again,’ says he, ‘after the warnin’ I gave you? Go back and tell your master ‘t is takin’ up his two last bills he ought to be, instead of passin’ more.’

“’ Mr. Trover, sir,’ says I, ‘sent me in.’

“‘Well, Mr. Twist sent you out again,’ says he, ‘and there’s your answer.’

“‘Short and sweet,’ says I, goin’ out, and pretending to be putting up the notes as I went.”

“Did you go down to the other fellow’s, – Macapes?”

“I did; but as he seen me coming out of the other place, he only ballyragged me, and said, ‘We only discount for them as has letters of credit on us.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘but who knows that they ‘re not coming in the post now?’

“‘We ‘ll wait till we see them,’ says he.

“‘By my conscience,’ says I, ‘I hope you ‘ll not eat your breakfast till they come.’ And so I walked away. Oh dear! is n’t it a suspicious world?”

“It’s a rascally world!” broke out O’Shea, with bitterness.

“It is!” assented Joe, with a positive energy there was no gainsaying.

“Is Mr. Layton gone with the rest this morning?”

“He is, and the Marquis. They ‘re a-horseback on two ponies not worth fifty shilling apiece.”

“And that counter-jumper, Mosely, I’ll wager he too thinks himself first favorite for the heiress.”

“Well, then, in the name of all that’s lucky, why don’t you thry your own chance?” said Joe, coaxingly.

“Is n’t it because I did try that they have left me out of this invitation? Is n’t it because they saw I was like to be the winning horse that they scratched me out of the race? Is n’t it just because Gorman O’Shea was the man to carry off the prize that they would n’t let me enter the lists?”