Loe raamatut: «One Of Them», lehekülg 17

“Poor Mr. O’Shea!” said a soft voice; and, looking up, he saw Mrs. Morris, as, leaning over the back of his chair, she bent on him a look half quizzical and half compassionate. “Poor Mr. O’Shea!”

“Why so? How?” asked he, with an affected jocularity. “Well,” said she, with a faint sigh, “you ‘re not the first man has drawn a blank in the lottery.” “I suppose not,” muttered he, half sulkily. “Nor will it prevent you trying your luck another time,” said she, in the same tone.

“What did she say? How did she mention it?” whispered he, confidentially.

“She did n’t believe you were serious at first; she thought it a jest. Why did you fall on your knees? it’s never done now, except on the stage.”

“How did I know that?” cried he, peevishly. “One ought to be proposing every day of the week to keep up with the fashions.”

“If you had taken a chair at her side, a little behind hers, so as not to scrutinize her looks too closely, and stolen your hand gently forward, as if to touch the embroidery she was at work on, and then, at last, her hand, letting your voice grow lower and softer at each word, till the syllables would seem to drop, distilled from your heart – ”

“The devil a bit of that I could do at all,” cried he, impatiently. “If I can’t make the game off the balls,” said he, taking a metaphor from his billiard experiences, “I ‘m good for nothing. But will she come round? Do you think she’ll change?”

“No; I ‘m afraid not,” said she, shaking her head. “Faix! she might do worse,” said he, resolutely. “Do you know that she might do worse? If the mortgages was off, O’Shea-Ville is seventeen hundred a year; and, for family, we beat the county.”

“I ‘ve no doubt of it,” replied she, calmly. “There was ancestors of mine hanged by Henry the Second, and one was strangled in prison two reigns before,” said he, proudly. “The O’Sheas was shedding their blood for Ireland eight centuries ago! Did you ever hear of Mortagh Dhub O’Shea?”

“Never!” said she, mournfully.

“There it is,” sighed he, drearily; “mushrooms is bigger, nowadays, than oak-trees.” And with this dreary reflection he arose and took his hat.

“Won’t you dine here? I’m sure they expect you to stop for dinner,” said she; but whether a certain devilry in her laughing eye made the speech seem insincere, or that his own distrust prompted it, he said, —

“No, I ‘ll not stop; I could n’t eat a bit if I did.”

“Come, come, you mustn’t take it to heart in this way,” said she, coaxingly.

“Do you think you could do anything for me?” said he, taking her hand in his; “for, to tell truth, it’s my pride is hurt. As we say in the House of Commons, now that my name is on the Bill, I ‘d like to carry it through. You understand that feeling?”

“Perhaps I do,” said she, doubtfully, while, throwing herself into a chair, she leaned back, so as to display a little more than was absolutely and indispensably necessary of a beautifully rounded ankle and instep. Mr. O’Shea saw it, and marked it. There was no denying she was pretty, – pretty, too, in those feminine and delicate graces which have special attractions for men somewhat hackneyed in life, and a “little shoulder-sore with the collar” of the world. As the Member gazed at the silky curls of her rich auburn hair, the long fringes that shadowed her fair cheeks, and the graceful lines of her beautiful figure, he gave a sigh, – one of those a man inadvertently heaves when contemplating some rare object in a shop-window, which his means forbid him to purchase. It was only as he heaved a second and far deeper one, that she looked up, and with an arch drollery of expression all her own, said, as if answering him, “Yes, you are quite right; but you know you could n’t afford it.”

“What do you mean, – not afford what?” cried he, blushing deeply.

“Nor could I, either,” continued she, heedless of his interruption.

“Faith, then,” cried he, with energy, “it was just what I was thinking of.”

“But, after all,” said she, gravely, “it wouldn’t do; privateers must never sail in company. I believe there’s nothing truer than that.”

He continued to look at her, with a strange mixture of admiration and astonishment.

“And so,” said she, rising, “let us part good friends, who may hope each to serve the other one of these days. Is that a bargain?” And she held out her hand.

“I swear to it!” cried he, pressing his lips to her fingers. “And now that you know my sentiments – ”

“Hush!” cried she, with a gesture of warning, for she heard the voices of servants in the corridor. “Trust me; and good-bye!”

“One ought always to have an Irishman amongst one’s admirers,” said she, as, once more alone, she arranged her ringlets before the glass; “if there’s any fighting to be done, he’s sure not to fail you.”

CHAPTER XXIV. A DAY IN EARLY SPRING

That twilight of the year called spring, most delightful of all seasons, is scarcely known in Italy. Winter dies languidly away, and summer bursts forth at once, and in a few days the trees are clothed in full foliage, the tall grass is waving, and panting lizards sun themselves on the rocks over which so lately the mountain torrent was foaming. There are, however, a few days of transition, and these are inexpressibly delicious. The balmy air scented with the rose and the violet stirs gently through the olive-trees, shaking the golden limes amidst the dark leaves, and carrying away the sweet perfume on its breath; rivulets run bright and clear through rocky channels, mingling their murmurs with the early cicala. The acacia sheds its perfume on the breeze, – a breeze so faint, as though it loved to linger on its way; and so, above, the lazy clouds hang upon the mountains, or float in fragments out to sea, as day wears on. What vitality there is in it all! – the rustling leaves, the falling water, the chirping birds, the softly plashing tide, all redolent of that happy season, – the year’s bright youth.

On such a day as this Alfred Layton strolled languidly through the grounds of Marlia. Three months of severe illness had worn him to a shadow, and he walked with the debility of one who had just escaped from a sick-room. The place was now deserted. The Heathcotes had gone to Rome for the winter, and the Villa was shut up and untenanted. It had been a cherished wish of poor Layton to visit the spot as soon as he could venture abroad; and Quackinboss, the faithful friend who had nursed him through his whole illness, had that day yielded to his persuasion and brought him there.

Who could have recognized the young and handsome youth in the broken-down, feeble, careworn man who now leaned over the palings of a little flower-garden, and gazed mournfully at a rustic bench beneath a lime-tree? Ay, there it was, in that very spot, one chapter of his life was finished. It was there she had refused him! He had no right, it is true, to have presumed so highly; there was nothing in his position to warrant such daring; but had she not encouraged him? That was the question; he believed so, at least. She had seen his devotion to her, and had not repulsed it. Nay, more, she had suffered him to speak to her of feelings and emotions, of hopes and fears and ambitions, that only they are led to speak who talk to willing ears. Was this encouragement, or was it the compassionate pity of one, to him, so friendless and alone? May certainly knew that he loved her. She had even resented his little passing attentions to Mrs. Morris, and was actually jealous of the hours he bestowed on Clara; and yet, with all this, she had refused him, and told him not to hope that, even with time, her feeling towards him should change. “How could it be otherwise?” cried he to himself. “What was I, to have pretended so highly? Her husband should be able to offer a station superior to her own. So thought she, too, herself. How her words ring in my ears even yet: ‘I do love rank’! Yes, it was there, on that spot, she said it. I made confession of my love, and she, in turn, told me of hers; and it was the world, the great and gorgeous prize, for which men barter everything. And then her cold smile, as I said, ‘What is this same rank you prize so highly; can I not reach it – win it?’ ‘I will not waste youth in struggle and conflict,’ said she. ‘Ha!’ cried I, ‘these words are not yours. I heard them one short week ago. I know your teacher now. It was that false-hearted woman gave you these precious maxims. It was not thus you spoke or felt when first I knew you, May.’ ‘Is it not well,’ said she, ‘that we have each grown wiser?’ I heard no more. I have no memory for the passionate words I uttered, the bitter reproaches I dared to make her. We parted in anger, never to meet again; and then poor Clara, how I hear her faint, soft voice, as she found me sitting there alone, forsaken, as she asked me, ‘May I take these flowers?’ and oh! how bitterly she wept as I snatched them from her hand, and scattered them on the ground, saying, ‘They were not meant for you!’ ‘Let me have one, dear Alfred,’ said she, just then; and she took up a little jasmine flower from the walk. ‘Even that you despise to give is dear to me! And so I kissed her on the forehead, and said, ‘Good-bye.’ Two partings, – never to meet again!” He covered his face with his hands, and his chest heaved heavily.

“It’s main dreary in these diggin’s here,” cried Quackinboss, as he came up with long strides. “I ‘ve been a-lookin’ about on every side to find some one to open the house for us, but there ain’t a crittur to be found. What ‘s all this about? You haven’t been a-cryin’, have you?”

Alfred turned away his head without speaking.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Layton,” said he, earnestly, “there’s no manner of misfortune can befall in life that one need to fret over, but the death of friends, or sickness; and as these are God’s own doin’, it is not for us to say they ‘re wrong. Cheer up, man; you and I are a-goin’ to fight the world together.”

“You have been a true friend to me,” said Layton, grasping the other’s hand, while he held his head still averted.

“Well, I mean to, that’s a fact; but you must rouse yourself, lad. We’re a-goin’ ‘cross seas, and amongst fellows that, whatever they do with their spare time, give none of it to grief. Who ever saw John C. Colhoun cry? Did any one ever catch Dan Webster in tears?”

“I was n’t crying,” said Layton; “I was only saddened to see again a spot where I used to be so happy. I was thinking of bygones.”

“I take it bygones is very little use if they don’t teach us something more than to grieve over ‘em; and, what’s more, Layton, – it sounds harsh to say it, – but grief, when it’s long persisted in, is downright selfishness, and nothing else.”

Layton slipped his arm within the other’s to move away, but as he did so he turned one last look towards the little garden.

“I see it all now,” said Quackinboss, as they walked along; “you’ve been and met a sweetheart down here once on a time, that’s it. She’s been what they call cruel, or she’s broke her word to you. Well, I don’t suppose there’s one man livin’ – of what might be called real men – as has n’t had something of the same experience. Some has it early, some late, but it’s like the measles, it pushes you main hard if you don’t take it when you ‘re young. There’s no bending an old bough, – you must break it.”

There was a deep tone of melancholy in the way the last words were uttered that made Layton feel his companion was speaking from the heart.

“But it’s all our own fault,” broke in Quackinboss, quickly; “it all comes of the way we treat ‘em.”

“How do you mean?” asked Layton, eagerly.

“I mean,” said the other, resolutely, “we treat ‘em as reasonable beings, and they ain’t. No, sir, women is like Red-men; they ain’t to be persuaded, or argued with; they ‘re to be told what is right for ‘em, and good for ‘em, and that’s all. What does all your courting and coaxing a gal, but make her think herself something better than all creation? Why, you keep a-tellin’ her so all day, and she begins to believe it at last. Now, how much better and fairer to say to her, ‘Here’s how it is, miss, you ‘ve got to marry me, that’s how it’s fixed.’ She ‘ll understand that.”

“But if she says, ‘No, I won’t’?”

“No, no,” said Quackinboss, with a half-bitter smile, “she ‘ll never say that to the man as knows how to tell her his mind. And as for that courtship, it’s all a mistake. Why, women won’t confess they like a man, just to keep the game a-movin’. I’m blest if they don’t like it better than marriage.”

Layton gave a faint smile, but, faint as it was, Quackinboss perceived it, and said, —

“Now, don’t you go a-persuadin’ yourself these are all Yankee notions and such-like. I’m a-talkin’ of human natur’, and there ain’t many as knows more of that article than Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss. All you Old-World folk make one great mistake, and nothing shows so clearly as how you ‘re a worn-out race, used up and done for. You live too much with your emotions and your feelin’s. Have you never remarked that when the tap-root of a tree strikes down too far, it gets into a cold soil? And from that day for’ard you ‘ll never see fruit or blossom more. That’s just the very thing you ‘re a-doin’. You ain’t satisfied to be active and thrivin’ and healthful, but you must go a-specu-latin’ about why you are this, and why you ain’t t’ other. Get work to do, sir, and do it.”

“It is what I intend,” said Layton, in a low voice.

“There ain’t nothing like labor,” said Quackinboss, with energy; “work keeps the devil out of a man’s mind, for somehow there’s nothing that black fellow loves like loafing. And whenever I see a great, tall, well-whiskered chap leaning over a balcony in a grand silk dressing-gown, with a gold stitched cap on his head, and he a-yawning, I say to myself, ‘Maybe I don’t know who ‘s at your elbow now;’ and when I see one of our strapping Western fellows, as he has given the last stroke of his hatchet to a pine-tree, and stands back to let it fall, wiping the honest sweat from his brow, as his eyes turn upward over the tree-tops to something higher than them, I say to my heart, ‘All right, there; he knows who it was gave him the strength to lay that sixty-foot stem so low.’”

“You say truly,” muttered Layton.

“I know it, sir; I ‘ve been a-loafing myself these last three years, and I ‘ve run more to seed in that time than in all my previous life; but I mean to give it up.”

“What are your plans?” asked Layton, not sorry to let the conversation turn away from himself and his own affairs.

“My plans! They are ours, I hope,” said Quackinboss. “You’re a-coming out with me to the States, sir. We fixed it all t’ other night, I reckon! I ‘m a-goin’ to make your fortune; or, better still, to show you how to make it for yourself.”

Layton walked on in moody silence, while Quackinboss, with all the zealous warmth of conviction, described the triumphs and success he was to achieve in the New World.

A very few words will suffice to inform our reader of all that he need know on this subject. During Layton’s long convalescence poor Quackinboss felt his companionable qualities sorely taxed. At first, indeed, his task was that of consoler, for he had to communicate the death of Alfred’s mother, which occurred in the early days of her son’s illness. The Rector’s letter, in conveying the sad tidings, was everything that kindness and delicacy could dictate, and, with scarcely a reference to his own share in the benevolence, showed that all care and attention had waited upon her last hours. The blow, however, was almost fatal to Layton; and the thought of that forlorn, deserted death-bed clung to him by day, and filled his dreams by night.

Quackinboss did his utmost, not very skilfully nor very adroitly, perhaps, but with a hearty sincerity, to combat this depression. He tried to picture a future of activity and exertion, – a life of sterling labor. He placed before his companion’s eyes the objects and ambitions men usually deem the worthiest, and endeavored to give them an interest to him. Met in all his attempts by a dreary, hopeless indifference, the kind-hearted fellow reflected long and deeply over his next resource; and so one day, when Layton’s recovered strength suggested a hope for the project, he gave an account of his own neglected youth, how, thrown when a mere boy upon the world, he had never been able to acquire more than a smattering of what others learn at school. “I had three books in the world, sir, – a Bible, Robinson Crusoe, and an old volume of Wheatson’s Algebra. And from a-readin’ and readin’ of ‘em over and over, I grew to blend ‘em all up in my head together. And there was Friday, just as much a reality to me as Father Abraham; and I thought men kept all their trade reckoning by simple equations. I felt, in fact, as if there was no more than these three books in all creation, and out of them a man had to pick all the wisdom he could. Now, what I ‘m a-thinkin’ is that though I ‘m too old to go to school, maybe as how you ‘d not refuse to give me a helpin’ hand, by readin’ occasionally out of those languages I only know by name? Teachin’ an old fellow like me is well-nigh out of the question; but when a man has got a long, hard-earned experience of human natur’, it’s a main pleasant thing to know that oftentimes the thoughts that he is struggling with have occurred to great minds who know how to utter them; and so many an impression comes to be corrected, or mayhap confirmed, by those clever fellows, with their thoughtful heads.”

There was one feature in the project which could not but gratify Layton; it enabled him to show his gratitude for the brotherly affection he had met with, and he accepted the suggestion at once. The first gleam of animation that had lighted his eyes for many a day was when planning out the line of reading he intended them to follow. Taking less eras of history than some of the great men who had illustrated them, he thought how such characters would be sure to interest one whose views of life were eminently practical, and so a great law-giver, a legislator, a great general, or orator, was each evening selected for their reading. If it were not out of our track, we might tell here how much Layton was amused by the strange, shrewd commentaries of his companion on the characters of a classic age; or how he enjoyed the curious resemblances Quackinboss would discover between the celebrities of Athens and Rome and the great men of his own country. And many a time was the reader interrupted by such exclamations as, “Ay, sir, just what J. Q. Adams would have said!” or, “That ‘s the way our John Randolph would have fixed it!”

But Quackinboss was not satisfied with the pleasure thus afforded to himself, for, with native instinct, he began to think how all such stores of knowledge and amusement might be utilized for the benefit of the possessor.

“You must come to the States, Layton,” he would say. “You must let our people hear these things. They ‘re a main sharp, wide-awake folk, but they ain’t posted up about Greeks and Romans. Just mind me, now, and you’ll do a fine stroke of work, sir. Give them one of these pleasant stories out of that fellow there, Herod – Herod – what d’ye call him?”

“Herodotus?”

“Ay, that’s he; and then a slice out of one of those slapping speeches you read to me t’ other night. I’m blessed if the fellow did n’t lay it on like Point Dexter himself; and wind up all with what we can’t match, a comic scene from Aristophanes. You see I have his name all correct. I ain’t christened Shaver if you don’t fill your hat with Yankee dollars in every second town of the Union.”

Layton burst out into a hearty laugh at what seemed to him a project so absurd and impossible; but Quackinboss, with increased gravity, continued, —

“Your British pride, mayhap, is offended by the thought of lecturin’ to us Western folk; but I am here to tell you, sir, that our own first men – ay, and you ‘ll not disparage them– are a-doin’ it every day. It’s not play-actin’ I ‘m speaking of. They don’t go before a crowded theatre to play mimic with face or look or voice or gesture. They ‘ve got a something to tell folk that’s either ennobling or instructive. They’ve got a story of some man, who, without one jot more of natural advantages than any of those listening there, made himself a name to be blessed and remembered for ages. They’ve to show what a thing a strong will is when united with an honest heart; and how no man, no matter how humble he be, need despair of being useful to his fellows. They ‘ve got many a lesson out of history to give a people who are just as ambitious, just as encroaching, and twice as warlike as the Athenians, about not neglecting private morality in the search after national greatness. What is the lecturer but the pioneer to the preacher? In clearing away ignorance and superstition, ain’t he making way for the army of truth that’s coming up? Now I tell you, sir, that ain’t a thing to be ashamed of!”

Layton was silent; not convinced, it is true, but restrained, from respect for the other’s ardor, from venturing on a reply too lightly. Quackinboss, after a brief pause, went on: —

“Well, it is possible what I said about the profit riled you. Well, then, don’t take the dollars; or take them, and give them, as some of our Western men do, to some object of public good, – if you ‘re rich enough.”

“Rich enough! I’m a beggar,” broke in Layton, bitterly, “I ‘m at this instant indebted to you for more than, perhaps, years of labor may enable me to repay.”

“I put it all down in a book, sir,” said Quackinboss, sternly, “and I threw it in the fire the first night you read out Homer to me. I said to myself, ‘You are well paid, Shaver, old fellow. You never knew how your heart could be shaken that way, and what brave feelings were lying there still, inside of it.’”

“Nay, dear friend, it is not thus I ‘m to acquit my debt Even the moneyed one – ”

“I tell you what, Layton,” said Quackinboss, rising, and striking the table with his clenched fist, “there’s only one earthly way to part us, and that is by speaking to me of this. Once, and forever, I say to you, there’s more benefit to a man like me to be your companion for a week, than for you to have toiled, and fevered, and sweated after gold, as I have done for thirty hard years.”

“Give me a day or two to think over it,” said Layton, “and I ‘ll tell you my resolve.”

“With all my heart! Only, I would ask you not to take my showing of its goodness, but to reason the thing well out of your own clear head. Many a just cause is lost by a bad lawyer; remember that” And thus the discussion ended for the time.

The following morning, when they met at breakfast, Layton took the other’s hand, and said, —

“I ‘ve thought all night of what you ‘ve said, and I accept, – not without many a misgiving as regards myself, but I accept.”

“I’d not take ten thousand dollars for the engagement, sir,” said Quackinboss, as he wrung Layton’s hand. “No, sir, I ‘d not take it, for even four cities of the Union.”

Although thus the project was ratified between them, scarcely a day passed that Layton did not experience some compunction for his pledge. Now, it was a repugnance to the sort of enterprise he was about to engage in, the criticisms to which he was to expose himself, and the publicity he was to confront; nor could all his companion’s sanguine assurances of success compensate him for his own heartfelt repugnance to try the ordeal.

“After all,” thought he, “failure, with all its pangs of wounded self-love, will only serve to show Quackinboss how deeply I feel myself his debtor when I am content to risk so much to repay him.”

Such was the bond he had signed, such his struggles to fulfil its obligations. One only condition he stipulated for, – he wished to go to Ireland before setting out for the States, to see the last resting-place of his poor mother ere he quitted his country, perhaps forever. Dr. Millar, too, had mentioned that a number of letters were amongst the few relics she had left, and he desired, for many reasons, that these should not fall into strangers’ hands. As for Qnackinboss, he agreed to everything. Indeed, he thought that as there was no use in reaching the States before “the fall,” they could not do better than ramble about Ireland, while making some sort of preparation for the coming campaign.

“How sad this place makes me!” said Layton, as they strolled along one of the leaf-strewn alleys. “I wish I had not come here.”

“That’s just what I was a-thinkin’ myself,” said the other. “I remember coming back all alone once over the Michigan prairie, which I had travelled about eight months before with a set of hearty companions, and whenever I ‘d come up to one of the spots where our tent used to be pitched, and could mark the place by the circle of greener grass, with a burned-up patch where the fire stood, it was all I could do not to burst out a-cryin’ like a child! It’s a main cruel thing to go back alone to where you ‘ve once been happy in, and there ‘s no forgettin’ the misery of it ever after.”

“That’s true,” said Layton; “the pleasant memories are erased forever. Let us go.”