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

“I have been waiting for that confession this half-hour, uncle, and really I was beginning to be afraid of a disappointment. Why, dearest uncle, you were within a hair’s breadth of forgetting your principles, and being actually caught, for once in your life, prepared and ready.”

“Oh, is that it? Is it my embarrassment, then, that affords you so much amusement?”

“Far from it,” said she, affectionately. “I was only laughing at that quiet little nook you retire to whenever you ought to be up and doing. Unprepared you say. Not a bit of it. Indisposed, indolent, unwilling, indifferent, any of these you like; but with a mind so full of its own good resources, and as ready to meet every contingency as any one’s, don’t say you are unprepared. Come, now, bear with me this once, dearest uncle, and don’t be angry if I throw myself, like a rock or sandbank, betwixt you and your harbor of refuge. But I hear Mr. Scanlan’s voice, and so I shall leave you. Be resolute, uncle, determined, and – ‘prepared’!” And with a gesture half menace and half drollery, she left the room as the attorney entered it.

Scanlan, like most of those who came but casually in contact with Martin, had conceived a low idea of his capacity, – lower by far than it deserved, since behind his indolence there lay a fund of good common-sense, – a mine, it must be acknowledged, that he seldom cared to work. The crafty man of law had, however, only seen him in his ordinary moods of careless ease and idleness, and believed that pride of family, fortune, and position were the only ideas that found access to his mind, and that by a dexterous allusion to these topics it would always be an easy task to influence and direct him.

“What’s this my niece has been telling me of Lord Kilmorris?” said Martin, abruptly, and without even replying to the salutations of the other, who hovered around a chair in an uncertainty as to whether he might dare to seat himself uninvited, – “he’s going to contest the borough with us, is n’t he?”

Scanlan leaned one arm on the back of the chair, and in a half-careless way replied, —

“He is afraid that you and he don’t quite agree, sir. He leans to measures that he suspects you may not altogether approve of.”

“Come, come, none of this balderdash with me, Master Maurice. Has he bought the fellows already, or, rather, have you bought them? Out with it, man! What will he give? Name the sum, and let us treat the matter in a business-like way.”

Scanlan sat down and laughed heartily for some minutes.

“I think you know me well enough, Mr. Martin, by this time,” said he, “to say whether I’ma likely man to meddle with such a transaction.”

“The very likeliest in Ireland; the man I ‘d select amidst ten thousand.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so, sir, that’s all,” said the other, with a half-offended air; “nor do I see that anything in my past life warrants the imputation.”

Martin turned fiercely round, about to make a reply which, if once uttered, would have ended all colloquy between them, when suddenly catching himself he said, “Have you taken any engagement with his Lordship?”

“Not as yet, sir, – not formally, at least. My Lord has written me a very full statement of his ideas on politics, what he means to do, and so forth, and he seems to think that anything short of a very liberal line would not give satisfaction to the electors.”

“Who told him so? Who said that the borough was not perfectly content with the representative that – that” – he stammered and faltered – “that its best friends had fixed upon to defend its interests? Who said that a member of my own family might not desire the seat?”

This announcement, uttered with a tone very much akin to menace, failed to produce either the astonishment or terror that Martin looked for, and actually supposing that the expression had not been heard, he repeated it. “I say, sir, has any one declared that a Martin will not stand?”

“I am not aware of it,” said Scanlan, quietly.

“Well, sir,” cried Martin, as if unable to delineate the consequences, and wished to throw the weight of the duty on his opponent.

“There would be a warm contest, no doubt, sir,” said Scanlan, guardedly.

“No, sir; nor the shadow of a contest,” rejoined Martin, angrily. “You’ll not tell me that my own town – the property that has been in my family for seven centuries and more – would presume – that is, would desire – to – to – break the ties that have bound us to each other?”

“I wish I could tell you my mind, Mr. Martin, without offending you; that is, I wish you ‘d let me just say what my own opinion is, and take it for what it is worth, and in five minutes you ‘d be in a better position to make up your mind about this matter than if we went on discussing it for a week.” There was a dash of independence in his utterance of these words that actually startled Martin; for, somehow, Scanlan had himself been surprised into earnestness by meeting with an energy on the other’s part that he had never suspected; and thus each appeared in a new light to the other.

“May I speak out? Well, then, here is what I have to say: the Relief Bill is passed, the Catholics are now emancipated – ”

“Yes, and be – ” Martin caught himself with a cough, and the other went on: —

“Well, then, if they don’t send one of their own set into Parliament at once, it is because they ‘d like to affect, for a little while at least, a kind of confidence in the men who gave them their liberties. O’Connell himself gave a pledge, that of two candidates, equal in all other respects, they’d select the Protestant; and so they would for a time. And it lies with you, and other men of your station, to determine how long that interval is to last; for an interval it will only be, after all. If you want to pursue the old system of ‘keeping down,’ you ‘ll drive them at once into the hands of the extreme Papist party, who, thanks to yourselves, can now sit in Parliament; but if you ‘ll moderate your views, take a humbler standard of your own power, – conciliate a prejudice here, obliterate an old animosity there – ”

“In fact,” broke in Martin, “swear by this new creed that Lord Kilmorris has sent you a sketch of in his letter! Then I ‘ll tell you what, sir – I ‘d send the borough and all in it to the – ”

“So you might, Mr. Martin, and you ‘d never mend matters in the least,” broke he in, with great coolness.

There was now a dead silence for several minutes; at last Martin spoke, and it was in a tone and with a manner that indicated deep reflection: —

“I often said to those who would emancipate the Catholics, ‘Are you prepared to change places with them? You have been in the ascendant a good many years, are you anxious now to try what the other side of the medal looks like? for, if not, leave them as they are.’ Well, they did n’t believe me; and maybe now my prophecy is nigh its accomplishment.”

“It is very likely you were right, sir; but whether or not, it’s the law now, and let us make the best of it,” said Scanlan, who had a practical man’s aversion to all that savored of mere speculative reasoning.

“As how, for instance – in what way, Mr. Scanlan?” asked Martin, curtly.

“If you ‘ll not support Lord Kilmorris – ”

“That I won’t, I promise you; put that clean out of your head to begin with.”

“Well, then, there is but one other course open. Come to some compromise with the Romanist party; if you don’t like to give them a stray vote – and mark me, they ‘d make better terms with you than with a stranger – but if you don’t like that, why, take the representation alternately with them.”