Lord Kilgobbin. Charles James Lever
‘Which would suit me to perfection. I must be back here by Tuesday if I had to walk the distance.’
‘Not at all improbable, so far as I know of your resources.’
‘What a churlish dog it is! Now had you, Master Dick, proposed to me that we should go down and pass a week at a certain small thatched cottage on the banks of the Ban, where a Presbyterian minister with eight olive branches vegetates, discussing tough mutton and tougher theology on Sundays, and getting through the rest of the week with the parables and potatoes, I’d have said, Done!’
‘It was the inopportune time I was thinking of. Who knows what confusion this event may not have thrown them into? If you like to risk the discomfort, I make no objection.’
‘To so heartily expressed an invitation there can be but one answer, I yield.’
‘Now look here, Joe, I’d better be frank with you: don’t try it on at Kilgobbin as you do with me.’
‘You are afraid of my insinuating manners, are you?’
‘I am afraid of your confounded impudence, and of that notion you cannot get rid of, that your cool familiarity is a fashionable tone.’
‘How men mistake themselves. I pledge you my word, if I was asked what was the great blemish in my manner, I’d have said it was bashfulness.’
‘Well, then, it is not!’
‘Are you sure, Dick, are you quite sure?’
‘I am quite sure, and unfortunately for you, you’ll find that the majority agree with me.’
‘ “A wise man should guard himself against the defects that he might have, without knowing it.” That is a Persian proverb, which you will find in Hafiz. I believe you never read Hafiz!’
‘No, nor you either.’
‘That’s true; but I can make my own Hafiz, and just as good as the real article. By the way, are you aware that the water-carriers at Tehran sing Lalla Rookh, and believe it a national poem?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’
‘I’ll bring down an Anacreon with me, and see if the Greek cousin can spell her way through an ode.’
‘And I distinctly declare you shall do no such thing.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear, what an unamiable trait is envy! By the way, was that your frock-coat I wore yesterday at the races?’
‘I think you know it was; at least you remembered it when you tore the sleeve.’
‘True, most true; that torn sleeve was the reason the rascal would only let me have fifteen shillings on it.’
‘And you mean to say you pawned my coat?’
‘I left it in the temporary care of a relative, Dick; but it is a redeemable mortgage, and don’t fret about it.’
‘Ever the same!’
‘No, Dick, that means worse and worse! Now, I am in the process of reformation. The natural selection, however, where honesty is in the series, is a slow proceeding, and the organic changes are very complicated. As I know, however, you attach value to the effect you produce in that coat, I’ll go and recover it. I shall not need Terence or Juvenal till we come back, and I’ll leave them in the avuncular hands till then.’
‘I wonder you’re not ashamed of these miserable straits.’
‘I am very much ashamed of the world that imposes them on me. I’m thoroughly ashamed of that public in lacquered leather, that sees me walking in broken boots. I’m heartily ashamed of that well-fed, well-dressed, sleek society, that never so much as asked whether the intellectual-looking man in the shabby hat, who looked so lovingly at the spiced beef in the window, had dined yet, or was he fasting for a wager?’
‘There, don’t carry away that newspaper; I want to read over that pleasant paragraph again!’
CHAPTER XII
THE JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY
The two friends were deposited at the Moate station at a few minutes after midnight, and their available resources amounting to something short of two shillings, and the fare of a car and horse to Kilgobbin being more than three times that amount, they decided to devote their small balance to purposes of refreshment, and then set out for the castle on foot.
‘It is a fine moonlight; I know all the short cuts, and I want a bit of walking besides,’ said Kearney; and though Joe was of a self-indulgent temperament, and would like to have gone to bed after his supper and trusted to the chapter of accidents to reach Kilgobbin by a conveyance some time, any time, he had to yield his consent and set out on the road.
‘The fellow who comes with the letter-bag will fetch over our portmanteau,’ said Dick, as they started.
‘I wish you’d give him directions to take charge of me, too,’ said Joe, who felt very indisposed to a long walk.
‘I like you,’ said Dick sneeringly; ‘you are always telling me that you are the sort of fellow for a new colony, life in the bush, and the rest of it, and when it conies to a question of a few miles’ tramp on a bright night in June, you try to skulk it in every possible way. You’re a great humbug, Master Joe.’
‘And you a very small humbug, and there lies the difference between us. The combinations in your mind are so few, that, as in a game of only three cards, there is no skill in the playing; while in my nature, as in that game called tarocco, there are half-a-dozen packs mixed up together, and the address required to play them is considerable.’
‘You have a very satisfactory estimate of your own abilities, Joe.’
‘And why not? If a clever fellow didn’t know he was clever, the opinion of the world on his superiority would probably turn his brain.’
‘And what do you say if his own vanity should do it?’
‘There is really no way of explaining to a fellow like you—’
‘What do you mean by a fellow like me?’ broke in Dick, somewhat angrily.
‘I mean this, that I’d as soon set to work to explain the theory of exchequer bonds to an Eskimo, as to make an unimaginative man understand something purely speculative. What you, and scores of fellows like you, denominate vanity, is only another form of hopefulness. You and your brethren—for you are a large family—do you know what it is to Hope! that is, you have no idea of what it is to build on the foundation of certain qualities you recognise in yourself, and to say that “if I can go so far with such a gift, such another will help me on so much farther.” ’
‘I tell you one thing I do hope, which is, that the next time I set out a twelve miles’ walk, I’ll have a companion less imbued with self-admiration.’
‘And you might and might not find him pleasanter company. Cannot you see, old fellow, that the very things you object to in me are what are wanting in you? they are, so to say, the compliments of your own temperament.’
‘Have you a cigar?’
‘Two—take them both. I’d rather talk than smoke just now.’
‘I am almost sorry for it, though it gives me the tobacco.’
‘Are we on