The Martins Of Cro' Martin Volume I Part 9

"I am not aware of it," said Scanlan, quietly.

"Well, sir," cried Martin, as if unable to delineate the consequences, and wished to throw the weight of the duty on his opponent.

"There would be a warm contest, no doubt, sir," said Scanlan, guardedly.

"No, sir; nor the shadow of a contest," rejoined Martin, angrily.

"You'll not tell _me_ that my own town--the property that has been in my family for seven centuries and more--would presume--that is, would desire--to--to--break the ties that have bound us to each other?"

"I wish I could tell you my mind, Mr. Martin, without offending you; that is, I wish you 'd let me just say what my own opinion is, and take it for what it is worth, and in five minutes you 'd be in a better position to make up your mind about this matter than if we went on discussing it for a week." There was a dash of independence in his utterance of these words that actually startled Martin; for, somehow, Scanlan had himself been surprised into earnestness by meeting with an energy on the other's part that he had never suspected; and thus each appeared in a new light to the other.

"May I speak out? Well, then, here is what I have to say: the Relief Bill is pa.s.sed, the Catholics are now emanc.i.p.ated--"

"Yes, and be--" Martin caught himself with a cough, and the other went on:--

"Well, then, if they don't send one of their own set into Parliament at once, it is because they 'd like to affect, for a little while at least, a kind of confidence in the men who gave them their liberties. O'Connell himself gave a pledge, that of two candidates, equal in all other respects, they'd select the Protestant; and so they would for a time.

And it lies with you, and other men of your station, to determine how long that interval is to last; for an interval it will only be, after all. If you want to pursue the old system of 'keeping down,' you 'll drive them at once into the hands of the extreme Papist party, who, thanks to yourselves, can now sit in Parliament; but if you 'll moderate your views, take a humbler standard of your own power,--conciliate a prejudice here, obliterate an old animosity there--"

"In fact," broke in Martin, "swear by this new creed that Lord Kilmorris has sent you a sketch of in his letter! Then I 'll tell you what, sir--I 'd send the borough and all in it to the--"

"So you might, Mr. Martin, and you 'd never mend matters in the least,"

broke he in, with great coolness.

There was now a dead silence for several minutes; at last Martin spoke, and it was in a tone and with a manner that indicated deep reflection:--

"I often said to those who would emanc.i.p.ate the Catholics, 'Are you prepared to change places with them? You have been in the ascendant a good many years, are you anxious now to try what the other side of the medal looks like? for, if not, leave them as they are.' Well, they did n't believe me; and maybe now my prophecy is nigh its accomplishment."

"It is very likely you were right, sir; but whether or not, it's the law now, and let us make the best of it," said Scanlan, who had a practical man's aversion to all that savored of mere speculative reasoning.

"As how, for instance--in what way, Mr. Scanlan?" asked Martin, curtly.

"If you 'll not support Lord Kilmorris--"

"That I won't, I promise you; put that clean out of your head to begin with."

"Well, then, there is but one other course open. Come to some compromise with the Romanist party; if you don't like to give them a stray vote--and mark me, they 'd make better terms with _you_ than with a stranger--but if you don't like that, why, take the representation alternately with them."

Martin rose from his chair and advanced close to where Scanlan was sitting, then, fixing his eyes steadfastly on him, said,--

"Who commissioned you to make this proposition to _me?_"

"No one, upon my oath. There is not a man breathing who has ever so much as hinted at what I have just said to you."

"I'm glad of it; I'm heartily glad of it," said Martin, calmly reseating himself. "I'm glad there is not another fellow in this county your equal in impudence! Aye, Mr. Scanlan, you heard me quite correctly. I saw many a change going on amongst us, and I foresaw many more; but that a Martin of Cro' Martin should be taught his political duty by Maurice Scanlan, and that that duty consisted in a beggarly alliance with the riff-raff of a county town,--that was, indeed, a surprise for which I was in no wise prepared."

"Well, sir, I 'm sorry if I have given any offence," said Scanlan, rising, and, in a voice of the most quiet intonation, making his excuses. "Your rejection of the counsel I was bold enough to suggest leaves me, at least, at liberty to offer my services where they will not be rejected so contumeliously."

"Is this a threat, Mr. Scanlan?" said Martin, with a supercilious smile.

"No, sir, nothing of the kind. I know too well what becomes _my_ station, and is _due to yours_, to forget myself so far; but as you don't set any value on the borough yourself, and as there may be others who do--"

"Stay and eat your dinner here, Scanlan," said Martin.

"I promised Mrs. Cronan, sir--"

"Send an apology to her; say it was _my_ fault,--that I detained you."

And without waiting for a reply, Martin sauntered from the room, leaving the attorney alone with his reflections.

CHAPTER VII. A COLLEGE COMPEt.i.tOR

Young Nelligan had distanced all his compet.i.tors in his college career; some who were his equals in ability, were inferior to him in habits of hard and patient labor; and others, again, were faint-hearted to oppose one in whose success they affected to believe luck had no small share. One alone had the honest candor to avow that he deserved his pre-eminence, on the true ground of his being their superior. This was a certain Jack Ma.s.singbred, a young fellow of good family and fortune, and who, having been rusticated at Oxford, and involved in some outrage against authority in Cambridge, had come over to finish his college career in the "Silent Sister."

Although Irish by birth, and connected with Ireland by ties of family and fortune, he had pa.s.sed all his life in England, his father having repaired to that country after the Union, exchanging the barren honor of a seat for an Irish borough for a snug Treasury appointment. His son had very early given proof of superior capacity. At Rugby he was distinguished as a scholar; and in his opening life at Oxford his talents won high praise for him. Soon after his entrance, however, he had fallen into a fast set,--of hunting, tandem-driving, and occasionally hard-drinking men,--in whose society he learned to forget all his aim for college success, and to be far more anxious for distinction as a whip or a stroke-oar than for all the honors of scholarship. At first he experienced a sense of pride in the thought that he could hold his own with either set, and take the lead in the examination-hall as easily as he a.s.sumed the first place in the social meeting. A few reverses, however, taught him that his theory was a mistake, that no amount of ability will compensate for habits of idleness and dissipation, and that the discursive efforts of even high genius will be ever beaten by the steady results of patient industry.

Partly indifferent to what had once been his great ambition, partly offended by his failures, Ma.s.singbred threw himself entirely into the circle of his dissipated companions, and became the very head and front of all their wildest excesses. An absurd exploit, far more ludicrous than really culpable, procured his rustication; a not less ridiculous adventure drove him from Cambridge; and he had at last arrived in Dublin, somewhat tamed down by his experiences, and half inclined to resume his long-abandoned desire for college distinction.

The habits of the Irish College were strikingly unlike those of either Oxford or Cambridge. Instead of a large cla.s.s consisting of men of great fortune and high expectations, he found a very slight sprinkling of such, and even they made up nothing that resembled a party. Separated by age, political distinctions, and county a.s.sociations, all stronger in the poorer country than in the richer one, they held little intercourse together, and were scarcely acquainted.

If there was less actual wealth, there was also less credit to be obtained by an Irish student. The Dublin shopkeeper acknowledged no prestige in the "gownsman;" he admitted him to no special privilege of book-debts; and as the great majority of the students resided with their families in the capital, there was no room for that reckless extravagance so often prosecuted by those who are temporarily removed from domestic supervision.

Ma.s.singbred was at first grievously disappointed. There were neither great names nor great fortunes amongst his new a.s.sociates. Their mode of life, too, struck him as mean and contemptible. There were clever men reading for honors, and stupid men steering their slow way to a degree; but where were the fast ones? where the fellows who could tool a team or steer a six-oar, who could dash up to town for a week's reckless life at Crocky's and Tattersall's, make their book on the Oaks, or perhaps ride the winner at a steeplechase?

It was all grievously slow. Dublin itself was a poor affair. He had few acquaintances, the theatres were bad, and public amus.e.m.e.nts there were none. His fellow-students, too, stood aloof from him. It was not that he was richer, better dressed, rode blood horses, dined at Morris-son's, wore kid gloves, and carried scented pocket-handkerchiefs. It was not that he had a certain air of puppyism as he wended his way across the courts, or sauntered elegantly into chapel. They could have forgiven any or all of these better than one of his offendings, which was his accent.

Strange as it may seem, his English voice and English p.r.o.nunciation were the most unpopular things about him, and many a real defect in his character might have met a more merciful construction had he given no initial "H" to "humble," and evinced a more generous confusion about his "wills" and "snails."

Somewhat bored by a life so unlike anything he had ever tried before,--partly, perhaps, stimulated to show that he could do something beside canter his thorough-bred along Sackville Street, or lounge in the stage-box in solitary splendor,--he went in for honors, and, to the surprise of all, succeeded. In fact, he beat two or three of the distinguished men of his time, till, thrown by the chance of events into Nelligan's division, he found at once his superior, and saw that he was in presence of an intelligence considerably above his own. When he had adventured on the struggle and found himself worsted, he acknowledged defeat with all the generosity of an honorable nature; and forcing his way through the crowd as it issued from the examination-hall, was the very first to grasp Nelligan's hand and congratulate him on his success.

"That was all got up; he was bursting with jealousy. The fellow could have strangled Nelligan," muttered one.

"He certainly put a good face on the disaster," said another, more mercifully given; "though I suppose he feels the thing sorely enough at heart!"

That was exactly what he did not, however. Young Ma.s.singbred regarded a college distinction as no evidence whatever of a man's attainments. He had seen stupid fellows win the prize for which clever ones strove in vain; but, at all events, he regarded such successes as contributing in nothing to the great race of life, and had even a theory that such early efforts were often the very means of exhausting the energies that should be exerted for the high rewards of the world. Besides this, he felt a pleasure in manfully showing that he was above a petty jealousy, and fairly owning himself beaten in a fair struggle.

"You are the better man, Nelligan," said he, gayly; "I 'll not try another fall with you, be a.s.sured."

Strange was it that in this very avowal he had a.s.serted what the other felt in his inmost heart to be an immeasurable superiority over him; and that in the very moment of striking his flag he had proclaimed his victory. To be able to run him so hard for the race and yet not feel the struggle, to strive for the prize and care nothing for defeat, seemed to Nelligan the evidence of an ambition that soared above college triumph, and he could not but envy that buoyant high-hearted temperament that seemed to make light of difficulties and not even feel depressed by a defeat.

Up to this time these two young men had scarcely known each other, but now they became intimate. The very difference in character served to draw them more closely together; and if Nelligan felt a degree of admiration for qualities whose brilliant display opened a new sense of enjoyment to him, the other was delighted with the gentle and almost childlike innocence of the student whose far-soaring intellect was mastering the highest questions of science.

Ma.s.singbred was one of those natures in whom frankness is an instinct.

It seems to such a relief to open the secrets of the heart and avow their weaknesses and their shortcomings, as though--by some Moral Popery--they would obtain the benefit of a free confession and go forth the better for their candor.

Not only did he tell Nelligan of his own career and its accidents, the causes for which he was not on good terms with his family, and so on; but he even ventured to discuss the public life of his father, and, in a spirit of banter, swore that to his political subserviency did he owe his whole fortune in life.

"My father was one of the crew when the vessel was wrecked, Nelligan,"

said he; "there was plenty of talk of standing by the ship to the last, and perishing with her. Some did so, and they are forgotten already. My father, however, jumped into the long-boat with a few more, and thought that probably they might find another craft more seaworthy; fortunately he was right; at least, a.s.suredly, I 'm not the man to say he was not."

"But was there no desertion of principle, Ma.s.singbred?" said Nelligan.