Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James
it,” cried Fagan, imperiously. “The dissimulation is unworthy of you. You ought to be a man of honor.”
“Egad, good temper would be the best quality for me just now,” said the other, with a smile; “for you seem bent on testing it.”
“I see it all,” cried Fagan, in a voice of anguish. “I see it all. Now hear me, Mr. MacNaghten. You are one who has seen much of the world, and will readily comprehend me. You are a man reputed to be kind-hearted, and you will not pain me by affecting a misunderstanding. Will you leave this to-morrow, and go abroad, say for a year or two? Give me your hand on it, and draw on me for one thousand pounds.”
“Why, Tony, what has come over you? Is it the air of the place has disordered your excellent faculties? What can you mean?”
“This is no answer to my question, sir,” said Fagan, rudely.
“I cannot believe you serious in putting it,” said MacNaghten, half proudly. “Neither you nor any other man has the right to make such a proposal to me.”
“I say that I have, sir. I repeat it. I am her father, and by one dash of my pen she is penniless to-morrow. Ay, by Heaven, it is what I will do if you drive me to it.”
“At last I catch your meaning,” said MacNaghten, “and I see where your suspicions have been pointing at. No, no; keep your money. It might be a capital bargain for me, Tony, if I had the conscience to close with it; and if you knew but all, you ‘ve no right to offer so much temptation. That path will bring you to the Castle. You ‘ll find Miss Polly in the library. Good-bye, Fagan.”
And without waiting for a reply, MacNaghten turned abruptly away, and disappeared in the wood.
Fagan stood for a second or two deep in thought, and then bent his steps towards the Castle.
CHAPTER V. JOE RAPER
The little incident which forms the subject of the last chapter occurred some weeks before my father’s return to Ireland, and while as yet the fact of his marriage was still a secret to all, save his most intimate friends. The morning after Fagan’s visit, however, MacNaghten received a few lines from my father, desiring him to look after and “pass” through the Custom House certain packages of value which would arrive there about that time. It chanced that poor Dan’s circumstances just at this moment made seclusion the safer policy, and so he forwarded the commission to Fagan.
The packages contained the wardrobe of Madame de Carew, and revealed the mystery of my father’s marriage. Fagan’s plans and speculations must have attained to a great maturity in his own mind, to account for the sudden shock which this intelligence gave him. He was habitually a cautious calculator, rarely or never carried away by hope beyond the bounds of stern reality, and only accepting the “probable” as the “possible.” In this instance, however, he must have suffered himself a wider latitude of expectation, for the news almost stunned him. Vague as were the chances of obtaining my father for a son-in-law, they were yet fair subjects of speculation; and he felt like one who secures a great number of tickets in a lottery, to augment his likelihood to win. Despite of all this, he had now to bear the disappointment of a “blank.” The great alliance on which he had built all his hopes of position and station was lost to him forever; and, unable to bear up against the unexpected stroke of fortune, he feigned illness and withdrew.
It is very difficult for some men to sever the pain of a disappointment from a sense of injury towards the innocent cause of it. Unwilling to confess that they have calculated ill, they turn their anger into some channel apart from themselves. In the present case Fagan felt as if my father had done him a foul wrong, as though he had been a party to the deceit he practised on himself, and had actually traded on the hopes which stirred his own heart. He hastened home, and, passing through the little shop, entered the dingy parlor behind it.
At a large, high desk, at each side of which stood innumerable pigeon-holes, crammed with papers, a very diminutive man was seated writing. His suit of snuff-brown was worn and threadbare, but scrupulously clean, as was also the large cravat of spotless white which enclosed his neck like a pillory. His age might have been about fifty-one or two; some might have guessed him more, for his features were cramped and contracted with wrinkles, which, with the loss of one of his eyes from small-pox, made him appear much older than he was. His father had been one of the first merchants of Dublin, in whose ruin and bankruptcy, it was said, Fagan’s father had a considerable share. The story also ran that Joe Raper – such was his name – had been the accepted suitor of her who subsequently married Fagan. The marriage having been broken off when these disasters became public, young Raper was forced by poverty to relinquish his career as a student of Trinity College, and become a clerk in Fagan’s office and an inmate of his house. In this station he had passed youth and manhood, and was now growing old; his whole ambition in life being to see the daughter of his former sweetheart grow up in beauty and accomplishments, and to speculate with himself on some great destiny in store for her. Polly’s mother had died within two years after her marriage, and to her child had Joe transmitted all the love and affection he had borne to herself. He had taken charge of her education from infancy, and had labored hard himself to acquire such knowledge as might keep him in advance of his gifted pupil. But for this self-imposed task it is more than likely that all his little classic lore had been long forgotten, and that the graceful studies of his earlier days had been obliterated by the wear and tear of a life so little in unison with them. To be her teacher, he had toiled through the long hours of the night, hoarding up his miserable earnings to buy some coveted book of reference, some deeply prized authority in criticism. By dint of downright labor, – for his was not one of those bright intelligences that acquire as if by instinct, – he had mastered several of the modern languages of Europe, and refreshed his knowledge of the ancient ones. With such companionship and such training, Polly Fagan’s youth had been fashioned into that strange compound, where high ambitions and gentle tastes warred with each other, and the imaginative faculties were cultivated amidst views of life alone suggestive of gain and money-getting.
If Fagan took little interest in the care bestowed by Raper on his daughter’s education, he was far from indifferent to the devotion of his faithful follower; while Joe, on the other hand, well knowing that without him the complicated business of the house could not be carried on for a single day, far from presuming on his indispensable services, only felt the more bound in honor to endure any indignity rather than break with one so dependent on him. It had been a kind of traditionary practice with the Fagans not to keep regular books, but to commit all their transactions to little fragments of paper, which were stuffed, as it seemed, recklessly into some one or other of that vast nest of pigeon-holes, which, like a gigantic honeycomb, formed the background of Joe Raper’s desk, and of which he alone, of men, knew the secret geography. No guide existed to these mysterious receptacles, save when occasionally the name of some suitor of uncommon importance appeared over a compartment; and as an evidence of what a share our family enjoyed in such distinction, I have heard that the word “Carew” figured over as many as five of these little cells.
Joe turned round hastily on his stool as his chief entered, and saluted him with a respectful bow; and then, as if continuing some unbroken thread’ of discourse, said, “Whyte is protested, – Figgis and Read stopped.”
“What of Grogan?” said Fagan, harshly.
“Asks for time. If he sells his stock at present prices, he ‘ll be a heavy loser.”
“So let him, – say that we’ll proceed.”
“The writ can’t run there; he lives in Mayo.”
“We ‘ll try it.”
“We did so before, and the sub-sheriff was shot.”
“Attorneys are plenty, – we ‘ll send down another.”
“Hump!” muttered Joe, as he turned over a folio of papers before him. “Ay, here it is,” said he. “Oliver Moore wishes to go to America, and will give up his lease; he only begs that you will vouchsafe to him some small compensation – ”
“Compensation! That word is one of yours, Mr. Raper, and I’ve no doubt has a classical origin, – you got it in Homer, perhaps; but, let me