Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James
am really curious to know upon what grounds, for I confess they are a secret to me!”
“So they must remain, then, sir, if you cannot persuade me to open more of my heart than I am in the habit of doing with comparative strangers. I can be very grateful for the honor you intend me, Mr. Carew; but the best way to be so is, probably, not to accompany that feeling with any sense of personal humiliation!”
“You are certainly not bent on giving me any clew to your motives, Fagan.”
“I’m sorry for it, sir; but frankness to you might be great unfairness to myself.”
“More riddles, Tony, and I ‘m far too dull to read them.”
“Well, then, sir, perhaps you’d understand me when I say that Anthony Fagan, low and humble as he is, has no mind to expose his daughter to the sneers and scoffs of a rank she has no pretension to mix with; that, miser as he is, he would n’t bring a blush of shame to her cheek for all the wealth of India! and that, rather than sit at home here and brood over every insult that would be offered to the usurer’s daughter by those beggarly spendthrifts that are at liberty by his bounty, he ‘d earn his name of the Grinder by crushing them to the dust!”
The vehemence of his utterance had gone on increasing as he spoke, till at the end the last words were given with almost a scream of passion.
“I must say, Fagan,” replied my father, calmly, “that you form a very humble, I trust a very unfair, estimate of the habits of my house, not to say of my own feelings. However, we’ll not dispute the matter. Good evening to you.”
“Good evening, sir; I ‘m sorry I was so warm; I hope I have said nothing that could offend you.”
“Not when you did n’t mean offence, believe me, Fagan. I repeat my hope that the friends and acquaintances with whom I live are not the underbred and ill-mannered class you think them; beyond that I have nothing to say. Good evening.”
Probably no amount of discussion and argument on the subject could so palpably have convinced Fagan of the vast superiority of a man of good manners over one of inferior breeding as did the calm and gentleman-like quietude of my father’s bearing, in contradistinction to his own passionate outbreak.
“One moment, sir, – one moment,” cried he, laying his hand on my father’s arm; “you really believe that one humbly born as Polly, the daughter of a man in my condition, would be received amongst the high and titled of Dublin without a scornful allusion to whence she came, – without a sneer at her rank in life?”
“If I thought anything else, Fagan, Ï should be dishonored in making this request of you.”
“She shall go, sir, – she shall go,” cried Fagan.
“Thanks for the confidence, Fagan; I know you ‘d rather trust me with half your fortune without a scratch of my pen in return.”
Fagan turned away his head; but a motion of his hand across his eyes showed how he felt the speech.
To obviate the awkwardness of the moment, my father entered upon the details of the journey, for which it was arranged that Fagan was to send his daughter to Bray, where a carriage from Castle Carew would be in waiting to convey her the remainder of the way. These points being settled, my father once again thanked him for his compliance, and departed.
I should be only mystifying my reader most unjustifiably should I affect any secrecy as to my father’s reasons for this singular invitation; for although the gossipry of the day could adduce innumerable plots and plans which were to spring out of it, I sincerely believe his sole motive was the pleasure that he and my mother were sure to feel in doing a piece of graceful and generous politeness. MacNaghten’s account of Polly had strongly excited their curiosity, not to speak of a more worthy feeling, in her behalf; and knowing that Fagan’s immense wealth would one day or other be hers, they felt it was but fair that she should see, and be seen, by that world of which she was yet to be a distinguished ornament. Beyond this, I implicitly believe they had no motive nor plan. Of course, I do not pretend to say that even amongst his own very guests, the men who travelled down to enjoy his hospitality, his conduct did not come in for its share of criticism. Many an artful device was attributed to this seeming stroke of policy, not one of which, however, did not more redound to my father’s craft than to his character for honorable dealing. But what would become of “bad tongues” in this world if there were not generous natures to calumniate and vilify? Of a verity, scandal prefers a high mark and an unblemished reputation for its assaults, far better than a damaged fame and a tattered character; it seems more heroic to shy a pebble through a pane of plate-glass than to pitch a stone through a cracked casement!
CHAPTER IX. A GENTLEMAN USHER
Among the members of the Viceregal suite who were to accompany his Grace on a visit was a certain Barry Rutledge, a gentleman usher, whose character and doings were well known in the times I speak of. When a very young man, Rutledge had been stripped of his entire patrimony on the turf, and was thrown for support upon the kindness of those who had known him in better days. Whether it was that time had developed or adversity had sharpened his wits, it is certain that he showed himself to be a far shrewder and more intelligent being than the world had heretofore deemed him. If he was not gifted with any very great insight into politics, for which he was free to own he had no taste, he was well versed in human nature, at least in all its least favorable aspects, and thoroughly understood how to detect and profit by the weaknesses of those with whom he came in contact.
His racing experiences had given him all the training and teaching which he possessed, and to his own fancied analogy between the turf and the great race of life did he owe all the shrewd inspirations that guided him.
His favorite theory was, that however well a horse may gallop, there is always, if one but knew it, some kind of ground that would throw him “out of stride;” and so of men: he calculated that every one is accompanied by some circumstance or other which forms his stumbling-block through life; and however it may escape notice, that to its existence will be referrable innumerable turnings and windings, whose seeming contradictions excite surprise and astonishment.
To learn all these secret defects, to store his mind with every incident of family and fortune of the chief actors of the time, was the mechanism by which he worked, and certainly in such inquisitorial pursuits it would have been hard to find his equal. By keenly watching the lines of action men pursued, he had taught himself to trace back to their motives, and by the exercise of these faculties he had at last attained to a skill in reading character that seemed little short of marvellous.
Nature had been most favorable in fitting him for his career, for his features were of that cast which bespeaks a soft, easy temperament, careless and unsuspecting. His large blue eyes and curly golden hair gave him, even at thirty, a boyish look, and both in voice and manner was he singularly youthful, while his laugh was like the joyous outburst of a happy schoolboy.
None could have ever suspected that such a figure as this, arrayed in the trappings of a courtly usher, could have inclosed within it a whole network of secret intrigue and plot. My mother had the misfortune to make a still more fatal blunder; for, seeing him in what she pardonably enough believed to be a livery, she took him to be a menial, and actually despatched him to her carriage to fetch her fan! The incident got abroad, and Rutledge, of course, was well laughed at; but he seemed to enjoy the mirth so thoroughly, and told the story so well himself, that it could never be imagined he felt the slightest annoyance on the subject. By all accounts, however, the great weakness of his character was the belief that he was decidedly noble-looking and highbred; that place him where you would, costume him how you might, surround him with all that might disparage pretension, yet that such was the innate gentlemanhood of his nature, the least critical of observers would not fail to acknowledge him. To say that he concealed this weakness most completely, that he shrouded it in the very depth of his heart, is only to repeat what I have already mentioned as to his character; for he was watchful over every trifle that should betray a knowledge of his nature, and sensitively alive to the terrors of ridicule. From that hour forward he became my mother’s enemy, – not, as many others might, by decrying her pretensions to beauty, or by any depreciatory remarks on her dress or manner, but in a far deeper