Charles Lever - Sir Jasper Carew - His Life and Experience

Personally, my father’s popularity was very great; politically, he had already secured many admirers, since, even in the few months of his parliamentary life, he had distinguished himself on two or three occasions. His tone was manly and independent; his appearance was singularly prepossessing; and then, as he owned a large estate, and spent his money freely, it would have been hard if such qualities had not made him a favorite in Ireland.

It was almost a procession that accompanied him from the quay to the great hotel of the Drogheda Arms, where they stopped to breakfast.

“I am glad to see you back amongst us, Carew!” said Joe Parsons, one of my father’s political advisers, a county member of great weight with the Opposition. “We want every good and true man in his place just now.”

“Faith! we missed you sorely at the Curragh meetings, Watty,” cried a sporting-looking young fellow, in “tops and leathers.” “No such thing as a good handicap, nor a hurdle race for a finish, without you.”

“Harry deplores those pleasant evenings you used to spend at three-handed whist, with himself and Dick Morgan,” said another, laughing.

“And where’s Dick?” asked my father, looking around him on every side.

“Poor Dick!” said the last speaker. “It’s no fault of his that he ‘s not here to shake your hand to-day. He was arrested about six weeks ago, on some bills he passed to Fagan.”

“Old Tony alive still?” said my father, laughing. “And what was the amount?” added he, in a whisper.

“A heavy figure, – above two thousand, I believe; but Tony would be right glad to take five hundred.”

“And couldn’t Dick’s friends do that much for him?” asked my father, half indignantly. “Why, when I left this, Dick was the very life of your city. A dinner without him was a failure. Men would rather have met him at the cover than seen the fox. His hearty face and his warm shake-hands were enough to inspire jollity into a Quaker meeting.”

“All true, Watty; but there’s been a general shipwreck of us all, somehow. Where the money has gone, nobody knows; but every one seems out at elbows. You are the only fellow the sun shines upon.”

“Make hay, then, when it does so,” said my father, laughing; and, taking but his pocket-book, he scribbled a few lines on a leaf which he tore out. “Give that to Dick, and tell him to come down and dine with us on Friday. You’ll join him. Quin and Parsons won’t refuse me. – And what do you say, Gervy Power? Can you spare a day from the tennis-court, or an evening from piquet? – Jack Gore, I count upon you. Harvey Hepton will drive you down, for I know you never can pay the post-boys.”

“Egad, they ‘re too well trained to expect it. The rascals always look to me for a hint about the young horses at the Curragh, and, now and then, I do throw a stray five-pound in their way.”

“We have not seen madam yet. Are we not to have that honor to-day?” said Parsons.

“I believe not; she’s somewhat tired. We had a stormy time of it,” said my father, who rather hesitated about introducing his bachelor friends to my mother without some little preparation.

Nor was the caution quite unreasonable. Their style and breeding were totally unlike anything she had ever seen before. The tone of familiarity they used towards each other was the very opposite to that school of courtly distance which even the very nearest in blood or kindred observed in her own country; and lastly, very few of those then present understood anything of French; and my mother’s English, at the time I speak of, did not range beyond a few monosyllables, pronounced with an accent that made them all but unintelligible.

“You’ll have Kitty Dwyer to call upon you the moment she hears you ‘re come,” said Quin.

“Charmed to see her, if she ‘ll do us that honor,” said my father, laughing.

“You must have no common impudence, then, Watty,” said another; “you certainly jilted her.”

“Nothing of the kind,” replied my father; “she it was who refused me.”

“Bother!” broke in an old squire, a certain Bob French of Frenchmount; “Kitty refuse ten thousand a-year, and a good-looking fellow into the bargain! Kitty’s no fool; and she knows mankind just as well as she knows horseflesh, – and, faix, that’s not saying a trifle.”

“How is she looking?” asked my father, rather anxious to change the topic.

“Just as you saw her last. She hurt her back at an ugly fence in Kennedy’s park, last winter; but she’s all right again, and riding the little black mare that killed Morrissy, as neatly as ever!”

“She’s a fine dashing girl!” said my father.

“No, but she’s a good girl,” said the old squire, who evidently admired her greatly. “She rode eight miles of a dark night, three weeks ago, to bring the doctor to old Hackett’s wife, and it raining like a waterfall; and she gave him two guineas for the job. Ay, faith, and maybe at the same time, two guineas was two guineas to her.”

“Why, Mat Dwyer is not so hard-up as that comes to?” exclaimed my father.

“Is n’t he, faith? I don’t believe he knows where to lay his hand on a fifty-pound note this morning. The truth is, Walter, Mat ran himself out for you .”

“For me! How do you mean for me?”

“Just because he thought you ‘d marry Kitty. Oh! you need n’t laugh. There ‘s many more thought the same thing. You remember yourself that you were never out of the house. You used to pretend that Bishop’s-Lough was a better cover than your own, – that it was more of a grass country to ride over. Then, when summer came, you took to fishing, as if your bread depended on it; and the devil a salmon you ever hooked.”

A roar of laughter from the surrounders showed how they relished the confusion of my father’s manner.

“Even all that will scarcely amount to an offer of marriage,” said he, in half pique.

“Nobody said it would,” retorted the other; “but when you teach a girl to risk her life, four days in the week, over the highest fences in a hunting country, – when she gives up stitching and embroidery, to tying flies and making brown hackles, – when she ‘d rather drive a tandem than sit quiet in a coach and four, – why, she’s as good as spoiled for any one else. ‘Tis the same with women as with young horses, – every one likes to break them in for himself. Some like a puller; others prefer a light mouth; and there’s more that would rather go along without having to think at all, sure that, no matter how rough the road, there would be neither a false step nor stumble in it.”

“And what’s become of MacNaghten?” asked my father, anxious to change the topic.

“Scheming, scheming, just the same as ever. I ‘m sure I wonder he ‘s not here to-day. May I never! if that’s not his voice I hear on the stairs. Talk of the devil – ”

“And you’re sure to see Dan MacNaghten,” cried my father; and the next moment he was heartily shaking hands with a tall, handsome man who, though barely thirty, was yet slightly bald on the top of the head. His eyes were blue and large; their expression full of the joyous merriment of a happy schoolboy, – a temperament that his voice and laugh fully confirmed.

“Watty, boy, it ‘s as good as a day rule to have a look at you again,” cried he. “There’s not a man can fill your place when you ‘re away, – devil a one.”

“There he goes, – there he goes!” muttered old French, with a sly wink at the others.

“Ireland wasn’t herself without you, my boy,” continued MacNaghten. “We were obliged to put up with Tom Burke’s harriers and old French’s claret; and the one has no more scent than the other has bouquet.”