CHAPTER VIII

CAPTAIN CON AND MRS. ADISTER O'DONNELL

Riding homeward from the hunt at the leisurely trot of men who have

steamed their mounts pretty well, Mr. Adister questioned Patrick

familiarly about his family, and his estate, and his brother's prospects

in the army, and whither he intended first to direct his travels:

questions which Patrick understood to be kindly put for the sake of

promoting conversation with a companion of unripe age by a gentleman who

had wholesomely excited his blood to run. They were answered, except the

last one. Patrick had no immediate destination in view.

'Leave Europe behind you,' said Mr. Adister warming, to advise him, and

checking the trot of his horse. 'Try South America.' The lordly gentleman

plotted out a scheme of colonisation and conquest in that region with the

coolness of a practised freebooter. 'No young man is worth a job,' he

said, 'who does not mean to be a leader, and as leader to have dominion.

Here we are fettered by ancestry and antecedents. Had I to recommence

without those encumbrances, I would try my fortune yonder. I stood

condemned to waste my youth in idle parades, and hunting the bear and

buffalo. The estate you have inherited is not binding on you. You can

realise it, and begin by taking over two or three hundred picked Irish

and English--have both races capable of handling spade and musket;

purchasing some thousands of acres to establish a legal footing there.

'You increase your colony from the mother country in the ratio of your

prosperity, until your power is respected, and there is a necessity for

the extension of your territory. When you are feared you will be on your

mettle. They will favour you with provocation. I should not doubt the

result, supposing myself to have under my sole command a trained body of

men of English blood--and Irish.'

'Owners of the soil,' rejoined Patrick, much marvelling.

'Undoubtedly, owners of the soil, but owing you service.'

'They fight sir'

'It is hardly to be specified in the calculation, knowing them. Soldiery

who have served their term, particularly old artillerymen, would be my

choice: young fellows and boys among them. Women would have to be taken.

Half-breeds are the ruin of colonists. Our men are born for conquest. We

were conquerors here, and it is want of action and going physically

forward that makes us a rusty people. There are--Mr. Adister's intonation

told of his proposing a wretched alternative,--'the Pacific Islands, but

they will soon be snapped up by the European and North American

Governments, and a single one of them does not offer space. It would

require money and a navy.' He mused. 'South America is the quarter I

should decide for, as a young man. You are a judge of horses; you ride

well; you would have splendid pastures over there; you might raise a

famous breed. The air is fine; it would suit our English stock. We are on

ground, Mr. O'Donnell, which my forefathers contested sharply and did not

yield.'

'The owners of the soil had to do that,' said Patrick. 'I can show the

same in my country, with a difference.'

'Considerably to your benefit.'

'Everything has been crushed there barring the contrary opinion.'

'I could expect such a remark from a rebel.'

'I'm only interpreting the people, sir.'

'Jump out of that tinder-box as soon as you can.'

'When I was in South America, it astonished me that no Englishman had

cast an eye on so inviting a land. Australia is not comparable with it.

And where colonisations have begun without system, and without hard

fighting to teach the settlers to value good leadership and respect their

chiefs, they tumble into Republics.'

Patrick would have liked to fling a word in about the Englishman's cast

of his eye upon inviting lands, but the trot was resumed, the lord of

Earlsfont having delivered his mind, and a minute made it happily too

late for the sarcastic bolt. Glad that his tongue had been kept from

wagging, he trotted along beside his host in the dusky evening over the

once contested land where the gentleman's forefathers had done their

deeds and firmly fixed their descendants. A remainder of dull red fire

prolonged the half-day above the mountain strongholds of the former

owners of the soil, upon which prince and bard and priest, and grappling

natives never wanting for fierceness, roared to-arms in the beacon-flames

from ridge to peak: and down they poured, and back they were pushed by

the inveterate coloniser--stationing at threatened points his old

'artillerymen' of those days and so it ends, that bard and priest and

prince; holy poetry, and divine prescription, and a righteous holding;

are as naught against him. They go, like yonder embers of the winter

sunset before advancing night: and to morrow the beacon-heaps are ashes,

the conqueror's foot stamps on them, the wind scatters them; strangest of

all, you hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law.

Patrick was too young to philosophise upon his ideas; or else the series

of pictures projected by the troops of sensations running through him

were not of a solidity to support any structure of philosophy. He

reverted, though rather in name than in spirit, to the abstractions,

justice, consistency, right. They were too hard to think of, so he

abandoned the puzzle of fitting them to men's acts and their consciences,

and he put them aside as mere titles employed for the uses of a police

and a tribunal to lend an appearance of legitimacy to the decrees of them

that have got the upper hand. An insurrectionary rising of his breast on

behalf of his country was the consequence. He kept it down by turning the

whole hubbub within him to the practical contemplation of a visionary

South America as the region for him and a fighting tenantry. With a

woman, to crown her queen there, the prospect was fair. But where dwelt

the woman possessing majesty suitable to such a dream in her heart or her

head? The best he had known in Ireland and in France, preferred the

charms of society to bold adventure.

All the same, thought he, it's queer counsel, that we should set to work

by buying a bit of land to win a clean footing to rob our neighbours: and

his brains took another shot at Mr. Adister, this time without

penetrating. He could very well have seen the matter he disliked in a man

that he disliked; but the father of Adiante had touched him with the gift

of the miniature.

Patrick was not asked to postpone his departure from Earlsfont, nor was

he invited to come again. Mr. Adister drove him to the station in the

early morning, and gave him a single nod from the phaeton-box for a

good-bye. Had not Caroline assured him at the leave-taking between them

that he had done her uncle great good by his visit, the blank of the

usual ceremonial phrases would have caused him to fancy himself an

intruder courteously dismissed, never more to enter the grand old Hall.

He was further comforted by hearing the stationmaster's exclamation of

astonishment and pleasure at the sight of the squire 'in his place'

handling the reins, which had not been witnessed for many a day and so it

appeared that the recent guest had been exceptionally complimented. 'But

why not a warm word, instead of turning me off to decipher a bit of

Egyptian on baked brick,' he thought, incurably Celtic as he was.

From the moment when he beheld Mr. Adister's phaeton mounting a hill that

took the first leap for the Cambrian highlands, up to his arrival in

London, scarcely one of his 'ideas' darted out before Patrick, as they

were in the habit of doing, like the enchanted bares of fairyland,

tempting him to pursue, and changing into the form of woman ever, at some

turn of the chase. For as he had travelled down to Earlsfont in the state

of ignorance and hopefulness, bearing the liquid brains of that young

condition, so did his acquisition of a particular fact destructive of

hope solidify them about it as he travelled back: in other words, they

were digesting what they had taken in. Imagination would not have stirred

for a thousand fleeting hares: and principally, it may be, because he was

conscious that no form of woman would anywhere come of them. Woman was

married; she had the ring on her finger! He could at his option look on

her in the miniature, he could think of her as being in the city where

she had been painted; but he could not conjure her out of space; she was

nowhere in the ambient air. Secretly she was a feeling that lay half

slumbering very deep down within him, and he kept the secret, choosing to

be poor rather than call her forth. He was in truth digesting with

difficulty, as must be the case when it is allotted to the brains to

absorb what the soul abhors.

'Poor old Philip!' was his perpetual refrain. 'Philip, the girl you loved

is married; and here's her portrait taken in her last blush; and the man

who has her hasn't a share in that!' Thus, throwing in the ghost of a

sigh for sympathy, it seemed to Patrick that the intelligence would have

to be communicated. Bang is better, thought he, for bad news than

snapping fire and feinting, when you're bound half to kill a fellow, and

a manly fellow.

Determined that bang it should be, he hurried from the terminus to

Philip's hotel, where he had left him, and was thence despatched to the

house of Captain Con O'Donnell, where he created a joyful confusion,

slightly dashed with rigour on the part of the regnant lady; which is not

to be wondered at, considering that both the gentlemen attending her,

Philip and her husband, quitted her table with shouts at the announcement

of his name, and her husband hauled him in unwashed before her, crying

that the lost was found, the errant returned, the Prodigal Pat recovered

by his kinsman! and she had to submit to the introduction of the

disturber: and a bedchamber had to be thought of for the unexpected

guest, and the dinner to be delayed in middle course, and her husband

corrected between the discussions concerning the bedchamber, and either

the guest permitted to appear at her table in sooty day-garb, or else a

great gap commanded in the service of her dishes, vexatious extreme for a

lady composed of orderliness. She acknowledged Patrick's profound salute

and his excuses with just so many degrees in the inclining of her head as

the polite deem a duty to themselves when the ruffling world has

disarranged them.

'Con!' she called to her chattering husband, 'we are in England, if you

please.'

'To be sure, madam,' said the captain, 'and so 's Patrick, thanks to the

stars. We fancied him gone, kidnapped, burned, made a meal of and

swallowed up, under the earth or the water; for he forgot to give us his

address in town; he stood before us for an hour or so, and then the

fellow vanished. We've waited for him gaping. With your permission I'll

venture an opinion that he'll go and dabble his hands and sit with us as

he is, for the once, as it happens.'

'Let it be so,' she rejoined, not pacified beneath her dignity. She named

the bedchamber to a footman.

'And I'll accompany the boy to hurry him on,' said the captain, hurrying

Patrick on as he spoke, till he had him out of the dining-room, when he

whispered: 'Out with your key, and if we can scramble you into your

evening-suit quick we shall heal the breach in the dinner. You dip your

hands and face, I'll have out the dress. You've the right style for her,

my boy: and mind, she is an excellent good woman, worthy of all respect:

but formality's the flattery she likes: a good bow and short speech. Here

we are, and the room's lighted. Off to the basin, give me the key; and

here's hot water in tripping Mary's hands. The portmanteau opens easy.

Quick! the door's shut on rosy Mary. The race is for domestic peace, my

boy. I sacrifice everything I can for it, in decency. 'Tis the secret of

my happiness.'

Patrick's transformation was rapid enough to satisfy the impatient

captain, who said: 'You'll tell her you couldn't sit down in her presence

undressed. I married her at forty, you know, when a woman has reached her

perfect development, and leans a trifle more to ceremonies than to

substance. And where have you been the while?'

'I'll tell you by and by,' said Patrick.

'Tell me now, and don't be smirking at the glass; your necktie's as neat

as a lady's company-smile, equal at both ends, and warranted not to relax

before the evening 's over. And mind you don't set me off talking

over-much downstairs. I talk in her presence like the usher of the Court

to the judge. 'Tis the secret of my happiness.'

'Where are those rascally dress-boots of mine?' cried Patrick.

Captain Con pitched the contents of the portmanteau right and left.

'Never mind the boots, my boy. Your legs will be under the table during

dinner, and we'll institute a rummage up here between that and the

procession to the drawing-room, where you'll be examined head to foot,

devil a doubt of it. But say, where have you been? She'll be asking, and

we're in a mess already, and may as well have a place to name to her,

somewhere, to excuse the gash you've made in her dinner. Here they are,

both of 'm, rolled in a dirty shirt!'

Patrick seized the boots and tugged them on, saying 'Earlsfont, then.'

'You've been visiting Earlsfont? Whack! but that's the saving of us! Talk

to her of her brother he sends her his love. Talk to her of the ancestral

hall--it stands as it was on the day of its foundation. Just wait about

five minutes to let her punish us, before you out with it. 'Twill come

best from you. What did you go down there for? But don't stand answering

questions; come along. Don't heed her countenance at the going in: we've

got the talisman. As to the dressing, it's a perfect trick of

harlequinade, and she'll own it after a dose of Earlsfont. And, by the

way, she's not Mrs. Con, remember; she's Mrs. Adister O'Donnell: and

that's best rolled out to Mistress. She's a worthy woman, but she was

married at forty, and I had to take her shaped as she was, for moulding

her at all was out of the question, and the soft parts of me had to be

the sufferers, to effect a conjunction, for where one won't and can't,

poor t' other must, or the union's a mockery. She was cast in bronze at

her birth, if she wasn't cut in bog-root. Anyhow, you'll study her.

Consider her for my sake. Madam, it should be--madam, call her,

addressing her, madam. She hasn't a taste for jokes, and she chastises

absurdities, and England's the foremost country of the globe, indirect

communication with heaven, and only to be connected with such a country

by the tail of it is a special distinction and a comfort for us; we're

that part of the kite!--but, Patrick, she's a charitable soul; she's a

virtuous woman and an affectionate wife, and doesn't frown to see me turn

off to my place of worship while she drum-majors it away to her own; she

entertains Father Boyle heartily, like the good woman she is to good men;

and unfortunate females too have a friend in her, a real friend--that

they have; and that 's a wonder in a woman chaste as ice. I do respect

her; and I'd like to see the man to favour me with an opportunity of

proving it on him! So you'll not forget, my boy; and prepare for a cold

bath the first five minutes. Out with Earlsfont early after that. All

these things are trifles to an unmarried man. I have to attend to 'm, I

have to be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles. 'Tis

the secret of my happiness.'

Priming his kinsman thus up to the door of the diningroom, Captain Con

thrust him in.

Mistress Adister O'Donnell's head rounded as by slow attraction to the

clock. Her disciplined husband signified an equal mixture of contrition

and astonishment at the passing of time. He fell to work upon his plate

in obedience to the immediate policy dictated to him.

The unbending English lady contrasted with her husband so signally that

the oddly united couple appeared yoked in a common harness for a

perpetual display of the opposition of the races. She resembled her

brother, the lord of Earlsfont, in her remarkable height and her calm air

of authority and self-sustainment. From beneath a head-dress built of

white curls and costly lace, half enclosing her high narrow forehead, a

pale, thin, straight bridge of nose descended prominently over her sunken

cheeks to thin locked lips. Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter

landscape, enjoyable in pictures, or on skates, otherwise nipping. . . .

Mental directness, of no greater breadth than her principal feature, was

the character it expressed; and candour of spirit shone through the

transparency she was, if that mild taper could be said to shine in proof

of a vitality rarely notified to the outer world by the opening of her

mouth; chiefly then, though not malevolently to command: as the portal of

some snow-bound monastery opens to the outcast, bidding it be known that

the light across the wolds was not deceptive and a glimmer of light

subsists among the silent within. The life sufficed to her. She was like

a marble effigy seated upright, requiring but to be laid at her length

for transport to the cover of the tomb.

Now Captain Con was by nature ruddy as an Indian summer flushed in all

its leaves. The corners of his face had everywhere a frank ambush, or

child's hiding-place, for languages and laughter. He could worm with a

smile quite his own the humour out of men possessing any; and even under

rigorous law, and it could not be disputed that there was rigour in the

beneficent laws imposed upon him by his wife, his genius for humour and

passion for sly independence came up and curled away like the smoke of

the illicit still, wherein the fanciful discern fine sprites indulging in

luxurious grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose. Perhaps, as

Patrick said of him to Caroline Adister, he was a bard without a theme.

He certainly was a man of speech, and the having fearfully to contain

himself for the greater number of the hours of the day, for the

preservation of the domestic felicity he had learnt to value, fathered

the sentiment of revolt in his bosom.

By this time, long after five minutes had elapsed, the frost presiding at

the table was fast withering Captain Con; and he was irritable to hear

why Patrick had gone off to Earlsfont, and what he had done there, and

the adventures he had tasted on the road; anything for warmth. His

efforts to fish the word out of Patrick produced deeper crevasses in the

conversation, and he cried to himself: Hats and crape-bands! mightily

struck by an idea that he and his cousins were a party of hired mourners

over the meat they consumed. Patrick was endeavouring to spare his

brother a mention of Earlsfont before they had private talk together. He

answered neither to a dip of the hook nor to a pull.

'The desert where you 've come from 's good,' said the captain, sharply

nodding.

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell ejaculated: 'Wine!' for a heavy comment upon one

of his topics, and crushed it.

Philip saw that Patrick had no desire to spread, and did not trouble him.

'Good horses in the stable too,' said the captain.

Patrick addressed Mrs. Adister: 'I have hardly excused myself to you,

madam.'

Her head was aloft in dumb apostrophe of wearifulness over another of her

husband's topics.

'Do not excuse yourself at all,' she said.

The captain shivered. He overhauled his plotting soul publicly: 'Why

don't you out with it yourself!' and it was wonderful why he had not done

so, save that he was prone to petty conspiracy, and had thought

reasonably that the revelation would be damp, gunpowder, coming from him.

And for when he added: 'The boy's fresh from Earlsfont; he went down to

look at the brav old house of the Adisters, and was nobly welcomed and

entertained, and made a vast impression,' his wife sedately remarked to

Patrick, 'You have seen my brother Edward.'

'And brings a message of his love to you, my dear,' the Captain bit his

nail harder.

'You have a message for me?' she asked; and Patrick replied: 'The captain

is giving a free translation. I was down there, and I took the liberty of

calling on Mr. Adister, and I had a very kind reception. We hunted, we

had a good day with the hounds. I think I remember hearing that you go

there at Christmas, madam.'

'Our last Christmas at Earlsfont was a sad meeting for the family. My

brother Edward is well?'

'I had the happiness to be told that I had been of a little service in

cheering him.'

'I can believe it,' said Mrs. Adister, letting her eyes dwell on the

young man; and he was moved by the silvery tremulousness of her voice.

She resumed: 'You have the art of dressing in a surprisingly short time.'

'There!' exclaimed Captain Con: for no man can hear the words which prove

him a prophet without showing excitement. 'Didn't I say so? Patrick's a

hero for love or war, my dear. He stood neat and trim from the silk socks

to the sprig of necktie in six minutes by my watch. And that's witness to

me that you may count on him for what the great Napoleon called

two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage; not too common even in his immortal

army:--when it's pitch black and frosty cold, and you're buried within in

a dream of home, and the trumpet springs you to your legs in a trice,

boots and trowsers, coat and sword-belt and shako, and one twirl to the

whiskers, and away before a second snap of the fingers to where the great

big bursting end of all things for you lies crouching like a

Java-Tiger--a ferocious beast painted undertaker's colour--for a leap at

you in particular out of the dark;--never waiting an instant to ask

what's the matter and pretend you don't know. That's rare, Philip; that's

bravery; Napoleon knew the thing; and Patrick has it; my hand's on the

boy's back for that.'

The captain was permitted to discourse as he pleased: his wife was wholly

given to the recent visitor to Earlsfont, whom she informed that Caroline

was the youngest daughter of General Adister, her second brother, and an

excellent maiden, her dear Edward's mainstay in his grief. At last she

rose, and was escorted to the door by all present. But Captain Con rather

shame-facedly explained to Patrick that it was a sham departure; they had

to follow without a single spin to the claretjug: he closed the door

merely to state his position; how at half-past ten he would be a free

man, according to the convention, to which his wife honourably adhered,

so he had to do likewise, as regarded his share of it. Thereupon he

apologised to the brothers, bitterly regretting that, with good wine in

the cellar, his could be no house for claret; and promising them they

should sit in their shirts and stretch their legs, and toast the old

country and open their hearts, no later than the minute pointing to the

time for his deliverance.

Mrs. Adister accepted her husband's proffered arm unhesitatingly at the

appointed stroke of the clock. She said: 'Yes,' in agreement with him, as

if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula, upon his

pious vociferation that there should be no trifling with her hours of

rest.

'You can find your way to my cabin,' he said to Philip over his shoulder,

full of solicitude for the steps of the admirable lady now positively

departing.

As soon as the brothers were alone, Philip laid his hand on Patrick,

asking him, 'What does it mean?'

Patrick fired his cannon-shot: 'She's married!' Consulting his feelings

immediately after, he hated himself for his bluntness.

Philip tossed his head. 'But why did you go down there?'

'I went,' said Patrick, 'well, I went . . . . I thought you looked

wretched, and I went with an idea of learning where she was, and seeing

if I couldn't do something. It's too late now; all's over.'

'My dear boy, I've worse than that to think of.'

'You don't mind it?'

'That's old news, Patrick.'

'You don't care for her any more, Philip?'

'You wouldn't have me caring for a married woman?'

'She has a perfect beast for a husband.'

'I'm sorry she didn't make a better choice.'

'He's a prince.'

'So I hear.'

'Ah! And what worse, Philip, can you be having to think of?'

'Affairs,' Philip replied, and made his way to the cabin of Captain Con,

followed in wonderment by Patrick, who would hardly have been his dupe to

suppose him indifferent and his love of Adiante dead, had not the thought

flashed on him a prospect of retaining the miniature for his own, or for

long in his custody.