Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James
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.”
French’s face at this moment elicited such a roar of laughter as drowned the remainder of the speech.
“‘T was little time you had either to run with the one or drink the other, Dan,” said he; “for you were snug in Kilmainham the whole of the winter.”
“Otium cum dignitate,” said Dan. “I spent my evenings in drawing up a bill for the better recovery of small debts.”
“How so, Dan?”
“Lending enough more, to bring the debtor into the superior courts, – trying him for murder instead of manslaughter.”
“Faith, you’d do either if you were put to it,” said French, who merely heard the words, without understanding the context.
Dan MacNaghten was now included in my father’s invitation to Castle Carew; and, after a few other allusions to past events and absent friends, they all took their leave, and my father hastened to join his bride.
“You thought them very noisy, my dear,” said my father, in reply to a remark of hers. “They, I have no doubt, were perfectly astonished at their excessive quietness, – an air of decorum only assumed because they heard you were in the next room.”
“They were not afraid of me, I trust,” said she, smiling. “Not exactly afraid,” said my father, with a very peculiar smile.
CHAPTER III. A FATHER AND DAUGHTER
The celebrated money-lender and bill-discounter of Dublin in the times we speak of, was a certain Mr. Fagan, popularly called “The Grinder,” from certain peculiarities in his dealings with those who stood in need of his aid. He had been, and indeed so had his father before him, a fruit-seller, in a quarter of the city called Mary’s Abbey, – a trade which he still affected to carry on, although it was well known that the little transactions of the front shop bore no imaginable proportion to the important events which were conducted in the small and gloomy back-parlor behind it.
It was a period of unbounded extravagance. Few even of the wealthiest lived within their incomes. Many maintained a style and pretension far beyond their fortunes, the first seeds of that crop of ruin whose harvest we are now witnessing. By large advances on mortgage, and great loans at moments of extreme pressure, the Grinder had amassed an immense fortune, at the same time that he possessed a very considerable influence in many counties, in whose elections he took a deep although secret interest.
If money-getting and money-hoarding was the great passion of his existence, it was in reality so in furtherance of two objects, on which he seemed to have set his whole heart. One of these was the emancipation of the Catholics; the other, the elevation of his only child, a daughter, to rank and station, by means of a high marriage.
On these two themes his every thought was fixed; and however closely the miser’s nature had twined itself around his own, all the thirst for gain, all the greed of usury, gave way before these master-passions. So much was he under their guidance that no prospect of advantage ever withdrew him from their prosecution; and he who looked for the Grinder’s aid, must at least have appeared to him as likely to contribute towards one or other of these objects.
Strange as it may seem to our modern notions, the political ambition seemed easier of success than the social. With all their moneyed embarrassments, the higher classes of Ireland refused to stoop to an alliance with the families of the rich plebeians, and were much more ready to tamper with their conscience on questions of state, than to abate a particle of their pride on a matter of family connection. In this way, Mr. Fagan could command many votes in the House from those who would have indignantly refused his invitation to a dinner.
In pursuit of this plan, he had given his daughter the best education that money could command. She had masters in every modern language, and in every fashionable accomplishment. She was naturally clever and quick of apprehension, and possessed considerable advantages in person and deportment. Perhaps an overweening sense of her own importance, in comparison