Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 33

Ormond, wherever he might be in Ireland, would probably find even the priest of the parish a person who could a.s.sist him sufficiently in learning French; as most of the Irish parish priests were, at that time, educated at St. Omer's or Louvain.

Father Jos had been at St. Omer's, and Harry resolved to attack him with a French grammar and dictionary; but the French that Father Jos had learnt at St. Omer's was merely from ear--he could not bear the sight of a French grammar. Harry was obliged to work on by himself. He again put off writing to thank Lady Annaly, till he could tell her that he had obeyed her commands; and that he could read at least a page of Gil Blas.

Before this was accomplished, he learnt from the agent that Lady Annaly was in great affliction about her son, who had broken a blood-vessel. He could not think of intruding upon her at such a time--and, in short, he put it off till it seemed too late to write at all.

Among the English books was one in many volumes, which did not seize his attention forcibly, like Tom Jones, at once, but which won upon him by degrees, drew him on against his will, and against his taste. He hated moralizing and reflections; and there was here an abundance both of reflections and morality; these he skipped over, however, and went on.

The hero and the heroine too were of a stiff fashion, which did not suit his taste; yet still there was something in the book that, in spite of the terrible array of _good people_, captivated his attention. The heroine's perpetual egotism disgusted him--she was always too good and too full of herself--and she wrote dreadfully long letters. The hero's dress and manner were too splendid, too formal, for every day use: at first he detested Sir Charles Grandison, who was so different from the friends he loved in real life, or the heroes he had admired in books; just as in old portraits, we are at first struck with the costume, but soon, if the picture be really by a master hand, our attention is fixed on the expression of the features and the life of the figure.

Sensible as Ormond was of the power of humour and ridicule, he was still more susceptible, as all n.o.ble natures are, of sympathy with elevated sentiments and with generous character. The character of Sir Charles Grandison, in spite of his ceremonious bowing on the hand, touched the n.o.bler feelings of our young hero's mind, inspired him with virtuous emulation, and made him ambitious to be a _gentleman_ in the best and highest sense of the word: in short, it completely counteracted in his mind the effects of his late study. All the generous feelings which were so congenial to his own nature, and which he had seen combined in Tom Jones, as if necessarily, with the habits of an adventurer, a spendthrift, and a rake, he now saw united with high moral and religious principles, in the character of a man of virtue, as well as a man of honour; a man of cultivated Understanding, and accomplished manners.

In Sir Charles Grandison's history, he read that of a gentleman, who, fulfilling every duty of his station in society, eminently _useful_, respected and beloved, as brother, friend, master of a family, guardian, and head of a large estate, was admired by his own s.e.x, and, what struck Ormond far more forcibly, was loved, pa.s.sionately loved, by women--not by the low and profligate, but by the highest and most accomplished of the s.e.x. Indeed, to him it appeared no fiction, while he was reading it; his imagination was so full of Clementina, and the whole Porretta family, that he saw them in his sleeping and waking dreams. The deep pathos so affected him, that he could scarcely recall his mind to the low concerns of life. Once, when King Corny called him to go out shooting--he found him with red eyes. Harry was ashamed to tell him the cause, lest he should laugh at him. But Corny was susceptible of the same kind of enthusiasm himself; and though he had, as he said, never been regularly what is called a _reading man_, yet the books he had read left ineffaceable traces in his memory. Fictions, if they touched him at all, struck him with all the force of reality; and he never spoke of the characters as in a book, but as if they had lived and acted. Harry was glad to find that here again, as in most things, they sympathized, and suited each other.

But Corny, if ready to give sympathy, was likewise imperious in requiring it; and Harry was often obliged to make sudden transitions from his own thoughts and employments, to those of his friend. These transitions, however difficult and provoking at the time, were useful discipline to his mind, giving him that versatility, in which persons of powerful imagination, accustomed to live in retirement, and to command their own time and occupations, are often most deficient. At this period, when our young hero was suddenly seized with a voracious appet.i.te for books, it was trying to his patience to be frequently interrupted.

"Come, come--Harry Bookworm you are growing!--no good!--come out!" cried King Corny. "Lay down whatever you have in your hand, and come off this minute, till I show you a badger at bay, with half-a-dozen dogs."

"Yes, sir--this minute--be kind enough to wait one minute."

"It has been hiding and skulking this week from me--we have got it out of its snug hole at last. I bid them keep the dogs off till you came.

Don't be waiting any longer. Come off, Harry, come! Phoo! phoo!

That book will keep cold, and what is it? Oh! the last volume of Sir Charles--not worth troubling your eyes with. The badger is worth a hundred of it--not a pin's worth in that volume but worked stools and chairs, and China jugs and mugs. Oh! throw it from you. Come away."

Another time, at the very death of Clarissa, King Corny would have Harry out to see a Solan goose.

"Oh! let Clarissa die another time; come now, you that never saw a Solan goose--it looks for all the world as if it wore spectacles; Moriarty says so."

Harry was carried off to see the goose in spectacles, and was pressed into the service of King Corny for many hours afterwards, to a.s.sist in searching for its eggs. One of the Black Islands was a bare, high, pointed, desert rock, in which the sea-fowl built; and here, in the highest point of rock, this Solan goose had deposited some of her eggs, instead of leaving them in nests on the ground, as she usually does. The more dangerous it was to obtain the eggs, which the bird had hidden in this pinnacle of the rock, the more eager Corny was to have them; and he, and Ormond, and Moriarty, were at this perilous work for hours. King Corny directing and bawling, and Moriarty and Ormond with pole, net, and polehook, swinging and leaping from one ledge of rock to another, clambering, clinging, sliding, pushing, and pulling each other alternately, from hold to hold, with frightful precipices beneath them.

As soon as Ormond had warmed to the business, he was delighted with the dangerous pursuit; but suddenly, just as he had laid his hand on the egg, and that King Corny shouted in triumph, Harry, leaping back across the cleft in the rock, missed his footing and fell, and must have been dashed to pieces, but for a sort of projecting landing-place, on which he was caught, where he lay for some minutes stunned. The terror of poor Corny was such that he could neither move nor look up, till Moriarty called out to him, that Master Harry was safe all to a sprained ankle.

The fall, and the sprain, would not have been deemed worthy of a place in these memoirs of our hero but from their consequences--the consequences not on his body but on his mind. He could not for some weeks afterwards stir out, or take any bodily exercise; confined to the house, and forced to sit still, he was glad to read, during these long hours, to amuse himself. When he had read all the novels in the collection, which were very few, he went on to other books. Even those, which were not mere works of amus.e.m.e.nt, he found more entertaining than netting, fishing-nets, or playing backgammon with Father Jos, who was always cross when he did not win. Kind-hearted King Corny, considering always that Harry's sprain was incurred in his service, would have sat with him all day long; but this Harry would not suffer, for he knew that it was the greatest _punishment_ to Corny to stay within doors a whole day. When Corny in the evening returned from his various out-of-doors occupations and amus.e.m.e.nts, Harry was glad to talk to him of what he had been reading, and to hear his odd summary reflections.

"Well, Harry, my boy, now I've told you how it has been with me all day, let's hear how you have been getting on with your bookmen:--has it been a good day with you to-day?--were you with Shakspeare--worth all the rest--all the world in him?"

Corny was no respecter of authorities in hooks; a great name went for nothing with him--it did not awe his understanding in the slightest degree.

If it were poetry, "did it touch the heart, or inflame the imagination?"

If it were history, "was it true?" If it were philosophy, "was it sound reasoning?" These were the questions he asked. "No cramming any thing down his throat," he said. This daring temper of mind, though it sometimes led him wrong, was advantageous to his young friend. It wakened Ormond's powers, and prevented his taking upon trust the a.s.sertions, or the reputations, even of great writers.

The spring was now returning, and Dora was to return with spring. He looked forward to her return as to a new era in his existence: then he should live in better company, he should see something better than he had seen of late--be something better. His chief, his best occupations during this winter, had been riding, leaping, and breaking in horses: he had broken in a beautiful mare for Dora. Dora, when a child, was very fond of riding, and constantly rode out with her father. At the time when Harry Ormond's head was full of Tom Jones, Dora had always been his idea of Sophy Western, though nothing else that he could recollect in her person, mind, or manner, bore any resemblance to Sophia: and now that Tom Jones had been driven out of his head by Sir Charles Grandison; now that his taste for women was a little raised by the pictures which Richardson had left in his imagination, Dora, with equal facility, turned into his new idea of a heroine--not _his_ heroine, for she was engaged to White Connal--merely a heroine in the abstract. Ormond had been warned that he was to consider Dora as a married woman--well, so he would, of course. She was to be Mrs. Connal--so much the better:--he should be quite at ease with her, and she should teach him French, and drawing, and dancing, and improve his manners. He was conscious that his manners had, since his coming to the Black Islands, rusticated sadly, and lost the little polish they had acquired at Castle Hermitage, and during one _famous_ winter in Dublin. His language and dialect, he was afraid, had become somewhat vulgar; but Dora, who had been refined by her residence with her aunt, and by her dancing-master, would polish him, and set all to rights, in the most agreeable manner possible. In the course of these his speculations on his rapid improvements, and his reflections on the perfectibility of man's nature under the tuition of woman, some idea of its fallibility did cross his imagination or his memory; but then he blamed, most unjustly, his imagination for the suggestion. The danger would prove, as he would have it, to be imaginary. What danger could there be, when he knew, as he began and ended by saying to himself, that he was to consider Dora as a married woman--Mrs. Connal?

Dora's aunt, an aunt by the mother's side, a maiden aunt, who had never before been at the Black Islands, and whom Ormond had never seen, was to accompany Dora on her return to Corny Castle: our young hero had settled it in his head that this aunt must be something like Aunt Ellenor in Sir Charles Grandison; a stiff-backed, prim, precise, old-fashioned looking aunt. Never was man's astonishment more visible in his countenance than was that of Harry Ormond on the first sight of Dora's aunt. His surprise was so great as to preclude the sight of Dora herself.

There was nothing surprising in the lady, but there was, indeed, an extraordinary difference between our hero's preconceived notion, and the real person whom he now beheld. _Mademoiselle_--as Miss O'Faley was called, in honour of her French parentage and education, and in commemoration of her having at different periods spent above half her life in France, looking for an estate that could never be found--Mademoiselle was dressed in all the peculiarities of the French dress of that day; she was of that indefinable age, which the French describe by the happy phrase of "une femme _d'un certain age_," and which Miss O'Faley happily translated, "a woman of _no particular age_."

Yet though of no particular age in the eye of politeness, to the vulgar eye she looked like what people, who knew no better, might call an elderly woman; but she was as alert and lively as a girl of fifteen: a little wrinkled, but withal in fine preservation. She wore abundance of rouge, obviously--still more obviously took superabundance of snuff--and without any obvious motive, continued to play unremittingly a pair of large black French eyes, in a manner impracticable to a mere Englishwoman, and which almost tempted the spectator to beg she would let them rest. Mademoiselle, or Miss O'Faley, was in fact half French and half Irish--born in France, she was the daughter of an officer of the Irish brigade, and of a French lady of good family. In her gestures, tones, and language, there was a striking mixture or rapid succession of French and Irish. When she spoke French, which she spoke well, and with a true Parisian accent, her voice, gestures, air, and ideas, were all French; and she looked and moved a well-born, well-bred woman: the moment she attempted to speak English, which she spoke with an inveterate brogue, her ideas, manner, air, voice, and gestures were Irish; she looked and moved a vulgar Irishwoman.

"What do you see so wonderful in Aunt O'Faley?" said Dora.

"Nothing--only--"

The sentence was never finished, and the young lady was satisfied; for she perceived that the course of his thoughts was interrupted, and all idea of her aunt effaced, the moment he turned his eyes upon herself.

Dora, no longer a child and his playfellow, but grown and formed, was, and looked as if she expected to be treated as, a woman. She was exceedingly pretty, not regularly handsome, but with most brilliant eyes--there was besides a childishness in her face, and in her slight figure, which disarmed all criticism on her beauty, and which contrasted strikingly, yet as our hero thought agreeably, with her womanish airs and manner. Nothing but her external appearance could be seen this first evening--she was tired and went to bed early.

Ormond longed to see more of her, on whom so much of his happiness was to depend.

CHAPTER IX.

This was the first time Mdlle. O'Faley had ever been at Corny Castle.

Hospitality, as well as grat.i.tude, determined the King of the Black Islands to pay her honour due.

"Now Harry Ormond," said he, "I have made one capital good resolution.

Here is my sister-in-law, Mdlle. O'Faley, coming to reside with me here, and has conquered her antipathy to solitude, and the Black Islands, and all from natural love and affection for my daughter Dora; for which I have a respect for her, notwithstanding all her eternal jabbering about _politesse_, and all her manifold absurdities, and infinite female vanities, of which she has a double proportion, being half French. But so was my wife, that I loved to distraction--for a wise man may do a foolish thing. Well, on all those accounts, I shall never contradict or gainsay this Mademoiselle--in all things, I shall make it my principle to give her her swing and her fling. But now observe me, Harry, I have no eye to her money--let her leave that to Dora or the cats, whichever pleases her--I am not looking to, nor squinting at, her succession. I am a great hunter, but not legacy-hunter--that is a kind of hunting I despise--and I wish every hunter of that kind may be thrown out, or thrown off, and may never be in at the death!"

Corny's tirade against legacy-hunters was highly approved of by Ormond, but as to the rest, he knew nothing about Miss O'Faley's fortune. He was now to learn that a rich relation of hers, a merchant in Dublin, whom living she had despised, because he was "neither _n.o.ble_, nor _comme il faut_," dying had lately left her a considerable sum of money: so that after having been many years in straitened circ.u.mstances, she was now quite at her ease. She had a carriage, and horses, and servants; she could indulge her taste for dress, and make a figure in a country place.

The Black Islands were, to be sure, of all places, the most unpromising for her purpose, and the first sight of Corny Castle was enough to throw her into despair.

As soon as breakfast was over, she begged her brother-in-law would show her the whole of the chateau from the top to the bottom.

With all the pleasure in life, he said, he would attend her from the attics to the cellar, and show her all the additions, improvements, and contrivances, he had made, and all he intended to make, if Heaven should lend him life to complete every thing, or any thing--there was nothing _finished_.

"Nor ever will be," said Dora, looking from her father to her aunt with a sort of ironical smile.

"Why, what has he been doing all this life?" said mademoiselle.

"Making a _shift_," said Dora: "I will show you dozens of them as we go over this house. He calls them subst.i.tutes--_I_ call them make-shifts."

Ormond followed as they went over the house; and though he was sometimes amused by the smart remarks which Dora made behind backs as they went on, yet he thought she laughed too scornfully at her father's _oddities_, and he was often in pain for his good friend Corny.

His majesty was both proud and ashamed of his palace: proud of the various instances it exhibited of his taste, originality, and _daring_; ashamed of the deficiencies and want of comfort and finish.

His ready wit had excuses, reasons, or remedies, for all Mademoiselle's objections. Every alteration she proposed, he promised to get executed, and he promised impossibilities with the best faith imaginable.

"As the Frenchman answered to the Queen of France," said Corny, "if it is possible, it _shall_ be done; and if it is impossible, it _must_ be done."

Mademoiselle, who had expected to find her brother-in-law, as she owned, a little more difficult to manage, a little savage, and a little restive, was quite delighted with his politeness; but presuming on his complaisance, she went too far. In the course of a week, she made so many innovations, that Corny, seeing the labour and ingenuity of his life in danger of being at once destroyed, made a sudden stand.

"This is Corny Castle, Mademoiselle," said he, "and you are making it Castle Topsy-Turvy, which must not be. Stop this work; for I'll have no more architectural innovations done here--but by my own orders. Paper and paint, and furnish and finish, you may, if you will--I give you a carte-blanche; but I won't have another wall touched, or chimney pulled down: so far shalt thou go, but no farther, Mdlle. O'Faley."

Mademoiselle was forced to submit, and to confine her brilliant imagination to papering, painting, and glazing.

Even in the course of these operations, King Corny became so impatient, that she was forced to get them finished surrept.i.tiously, while he was out of the way in the mornings.

She made out who resided at every place within possible reach of morning or dinner visit: every house on the opposite banks of the lake was soon known to her, and she was current in every house. The boat was constantly rowing backwards and forwards over the lake; cars waiting or driving on the banks: in short, this summer all was gaiety at the Black Islands. Miss O'Faley was said to be a great acquisition in the neighbourhood: she was so gay, so sociable, so communicative; and she certainly, above all, knew so much of the world; she was continually receiving letters, and news, and patterns, from Dublin, and the Black Rock, and Paris. Each of which places, and all standing nearly upon the same level, made a great figure in her conversation, and in the imagination of the half or quarter gentry, with whom she consorted in this remote place. Every thing is great or small by comparison, and she was a great person in this little world. It had been the report of the country, that her niece was promised to the eldest son of Mr. Connal of Glynn; but the aunt seemed so averse to the match, and expressed this so openly, that some people began to think it would be broken off; others, who knew Cornelius O'Shane's steadiness to his _word of honour_, were convinced that Miss O'Faley would never shake King Corny, and that Dora would a.s.suredly be Mrs. Connal. All agreed that it was a foolish promise--that he might do better for his daughter. Miss O'Shane, with her father's fortune and her aunt's, would be a great prize; besides, she was thought quite a beauty, and _remarkable elegant_.

Dora was just the thing to be the belle and coquette of the Black Islands; the alternate scorn and familiarity with which she treated her admirers, and the interest and curiosity she excited, by sometimes taking delightful pains to attract, and then capriciously repelling, _succeeded_, as Miss O'Faley observed, admirably. Harry Ormond accompanied her and her aunt on all their parties of pleasure: Miss O'Faley would never venture in the boat or across the lake without him.

He was absolutely essential to their parties: he was useful in the boat; he was useful to drive the car--Miss O'Faley would not trust any body else to drive her; he was an ornament to the ball--Miss O'Faley dubbed him her beau: she undertook to polish him, and to teach him to speak French--she was astonished by the quickness with which he acquired the language, and caught the true Parisian p.r.o.nunciation. She often reiterated to her niece, and to others, who repeated it to Ormond, "that it was the greatest of pities he had but three hundred a year upon earth; but that, even with that pittance, she would prefer him for a nephew to another with his thousands. Mr. Ormond was well-born, and he had some _politesse_; and a winter at Paris would make him quite another person, quite a charming young man. He would have great _success_, she could answer for it, in certain _circles_ and _salons_ that she could name, only it might turn his head too much." So far she said, and more she thought.

It was a million of pities that such a woman as herself, and such a girl as Dora, and such a young man as Mr. Ormond might be made, should be buried all their days in the Black Islands. Mdlle. O'Faley's heart still turned to Paris: in Paris she was determined to live--there was no _living_, what you call _living_, any where else--elsewhere people only vegetate, as somebody said. Miss O'Faley, nevertheless, was excessively fond of her niece; and how to make the love for her niece and the love for Paris coincide, was the question. She long had formed a scheme of carrying her dear niece to Paris, and marrying her there to some M. le Baron or M. le Marquis; but Dora's father would not hear of her living any where but in Ireland, or marrying any one but an Irishman. Miss O'Faley had lived long enough in Ireland to know that the usual method, in all disputes, is to split the difference: therefore she decided that her niece should marry some Irishman who would take her to Paris, and reside with her there, at least a great part of his time--the latter part of the bargain to be kept a secret from the father till the marriage should be accomplished. Harry Ormond appeared to be the very man for this purpose: he seemed to hang loosely upon the world--no family connexions seemed to have any rights over him; he had no profession--but a very small fortune. Miss O'Faley's fortune might be very convenient, and Dora's person very agreeable to him; and it was scarcely to be doubted that he would easily be persuaded to quit the Black Islands, and the British Islands, for Dora's sake. The pet.i.t menage was already quite arranged in Mdlle. O'Faley's head--even the wedding-dresses had floated in her fancy. "As to the promise given to White Connal," as she said to herself, "it would be a mercy to save her niece from such a man; for she had seen him lately, when he had called upon her in Dublin, and he was a vulgar person: his hair looked as if it had not been cut these hundred years, and he wore--any thing but what he should wear; therefore it would be a favour to her brother-in-law, for whom she had in reality a serious regard,--it would be doing him the greatest imaginable benefit, to save him from the shame of either keeping or breaking his ridiculous and savage promise." Her plan was therefore to prevent the possibility of his keeping it, by marrying her niece privately to Ormond before White Connal should return in October.

When the thing was done, and could not be undone, Cornelius O'Shane, she was persuaded, would be very glad of it, for Harry Ormond was his particular favourite: he had called him his son--son-in-law was almost the same thing. Thus arguing with happy female casuistry, Mademoiselle went on with the prosecution of her plan. To the French spirit of intrigue and gallantry she joined Irish acuteness, and Irish varieties of odd resource, with the art of laying suspicion asleep by the appearance of an imprudent, blundering good nature; add to all this a degree of _confidence_, that could not have been acquired by any means but one. Thus accomplished, "rarely did she manage matters." By the very boldness and openness of her railing against the intended bridegroom, she convinced her brother-in-law that she meant nothing more than _talk_. Besides, through all her changing varieties of objections, there was one point on which she never varied--she never objected to going to Dublin, in September, to buy the wedding-clothes for Dora. This seemed to Cornelius O'Shane perfect proof, that she had no serious intention to break off or defer the match. As to the rest, he was glad to see his own Harry such a favourite: he deserved to be a favourite with every body, Cornelius thought. The young people were continually together. "So much the better," he would say: "all was above-board, and there could be no harm going forward, and no danger in life." All was above-board on Harry Ormond's part; he knew nothing of Miss O'Faley's designs, nor did he as yet feel that there was for him much _danger_. He was not thinking as a lover of Dora in particular, but he felt a new and extraordinary desire to please in general. On every fair occasion, he liked to show how well he could ride; how well he could dance; how gallant and agreeable he could be: his whole attention was now turned to the cultivation of his personal accomplishments. He succeeded: he danced, he rode to admiration--his glories of horsemanship, and sportsmanship, the birds that he shot, and the fish that he caught, and the leaps that he took, are to this hour recorded in the tradition of the inhabitants of the Black Islands. At that time, his feats of personal activity and address made him the theme of every tongue, the delight of every eye, the admiration of every woman, and the envy of every man: not only with the damsels of Peggy Sheridan's cla.s.s was he _the_ favourite, but with all the young ladies, the belles of the half gentry, who filled the ball-rooms; and who made the most distinguished figure in the riding, boating, walking, tea-drinking parties. To all, or any of these belles, he devoted his attention rather than to Dora, for he was upon honour; and very honourable he was, and very prudent, moreover, he thought himself. He was, at present, quite content with general admiration: there was, or there seemed, at this time, more danger for his head than his heart--more danger that his head should be turned with the foolish attentions paid him by many silly girls, than that he should be a dupe to a pa.s.sion for any one of them: there was imminent danger of his becoming a mere dancing, driving, country c.o.xcomb.