The Celt and Saxon, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Celt and Saxon, Complete

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

The prophetic captain pointed at the spot. He then said: 'And now I'm for
my pipe, and the blackest clay of the party, with your permission. I'll
just go to the window to see if the stars are out overhead. They're my
blessed guardian angels.'

There was a pause. Philip broke from a brown study to glance at his
brother. Patrick made a queer face.

'Fun and good-fellowship to-night, Con,' said Philip, as the captain
sadly reported no star visible.

'Have I ever flown a signal to the contrary?' retorted the captain.

'No politics, and I 'll thank you,' said Philip: 'none of your early
recollections. Be jovial.'

'You should have seen me here the other night about a month ago; I
smuggled up an old countrywoman of ours, with the connivance of rosy
Mary,' said Captain Con, suffused in the merriest of grins. 'She sells
apples at a stall at a corner of a street hard by, and I saw her sitting
pulling at her old pipe in the cold October fog morning and evening for
comfort, and was overwhelmed with compassion and fraternal sentiment; and
so I invited her to be at the door of the house at half-past ten, just to
have a roll with her in Irish mud, and mend her torn soul with a stitch
or two of rejoicing. She told me stories; and one was pretty good, of a
relative of hers, or somebody's--I should say, a century old, but she
told it with a becoming air of appropriation that made it family history,
for she's come down in the world, and this fellow had a stain of red upon
him, and wanted cleaning; and, "What!" says the good father, "Mika! you
did it in cold blood?" And says Mika, "Not I, your Riverence. I got
myself into a passion 'fore I let loose." I believe she smoked this
identical pipe. She acknowledged the merits of my whisky, as poets do
hearing fine verses, never clapping hands, but with the expressiveness of
grave absorption. That's the way to make good things a part of you. She
was a treat. I got her out and off at midnight, rosy Mary sneaking her
down, and the old girl quiet as a mouse for the fun's sake. The whole
intrigue was exquisitely managed.'

'You run great risks,' Philip observed.

'I do,' said the captain.

He called on the brothers to admire the 'martial and fumial' decorations
of his round tower, buzzing over the display of implements, while Patrick
examined guns and Philip unsheathed swords. An ancient clay pipe from the
bed of the Thames and one from the bed of the Boyne were laid side by
side, and strange to relate, the Irish pipe and English immediately, by
the mere fact of their being proximate, entered into rivalry; they all
but leapt upon one another. The captain judicially decided the case
against the English pipe, as a newer pipe of grosser manufacture, not so
curious by any means.

'This,' Philip held up the reputed Irish pipe, and scanned as he twirled
it on his thumb, 'This was dropped in Boyne Water by one of William's
troopers. It is an Orange pipe. I take it to be of English make.'

'If I thought that, I'd stamp my heel on the humbug the neighbour
minute,' said Captain Con. 'Where's the sign of English marks?'

'The pipes resemble one another,' said Philip, 'like tails of
Shannon-bred retrievers.'

'Maybe they 're both Irish, then?' the captain caught at analogy to
rescue his favourite from reproach.

'Both of them are Saxon.'

'Not a bit of it!'

'Look at the clay.'

'I look, and I tell you, Philip, it's of a piece with your lukewarmness
for the country, or you wouldn't talk like that.'

'There is no record of pipe manufactories in Ireland at the period you
name.'

'There is: and the jealousy of rulers caused them to be destroyed by
decrees, if you want historical evidence.'

'Your opposition to the Saxon would rob him of his pipe, Con!'

'Let him go to the deuce with as many pipes as he can carry; but he
shan't have this one.'

'Not a toss-up of difference is to be seen in the pair.'

'Use your eyes. The Irish bowl is broken, and the English has an inch
longer stem!'

'O the Irish bowl is broken!' Philip sang.

'You've the heart of a renegade-foreigner not to see it!' cried the
captain.

Patrick intervened saying: 'I suspect they're Dutch.'

'Well, and that 's possible.' Captain Con scrutinised them to calm his
temper: 'there's a Dutchiness in the shape.'

He offered Philip the compromise of 'Dutch' rather plaintively, but it
was not accepted, and the pipes would have mingled their fragments on the
hearthstone if Patrick had not stayed his arm, saying: 'Don't hurt them.'

'And I won't,' the captain shook his hand gratefully.

'But will Philip O'Donnell tell me that Ireland should lie down with
England on the terms of a traveller obliged to take a bedfellow? Come! He
hasn't an answer. Put it to him, and you pose him. But he 'll not stir,
though he admits the antagonism. And Ireland is asked to lie down with
England on a couch blessed by the priest! Not she. Wipe out our
grievances, and then we'll begin to talk of policy. Good Lord!--love? The
love of Ireland for the conquering country will be the celebrated
ceremony in the concluding chapter previous to the inauguration of the
millennium. Thousands of us are in a starving state at home this winter,
Patrick. And it's not the fault of England?--landlordism 's not? Who
caused the ruin of all Ireland's industries? You might as well say that
it 's the fault of the poor beggar to go limping and hungry because his
cruel master struck him a blow to cripple him. We don't want half and
half doctoring, and it's too late in the day for half and half oratory.
We want freedom, and we'll have it, and we won't leave it to the Saxon to
think about giving it. And if your brother Philip won't accept this
blazing fine offer, then I will, and you'll behold me in a new attitude.
The fellow yawns! You don't know me yet, Philip. They tell us over here
we ought to be satisfied. Fall upon our list of wrongs, and they set to
work yawning. You can only move them by popping at them over hedges and
roaring on platforms. They're incapable of understanding a complaint a
yard beyond their noses. The Englishman has an island mind, and when he's
out of it he's at sea.'

'Mad, you mean,' said Philip.

'I repeat my words, Captain Philip O'Donnell, late of the staff of the
General commanding in Canada.'

'The Irishman too has an island mind, and when he's out of it he's at
sea, and unable to manage his craft,' said Philip.

'You'll find more craft in him when he's buffeted than you reckoned on,'
his cousin flung back. 'And if that isn't the speech of a traitor sold to
the enemy, and now throwing off the mask, traitors never did mischief in
Ireland! Why, what can you discover to admire in these people? Isn't
their army such a combination of colours in the uniforms, with their
yellow facings on red jackets, I never saw out of a doll-shop, and never
saw there. And their Horse Guards, weedy to a man! fit for a doll-shop
they are, by my faith! And their Foot Guards: Have ye met the fellows
marching? with their feet turned out, flat as my laundress's irons, and
the muscles of their calves depending on the joints to get 'm along, for
elasticity never gave those bones of theirs a springing touch; and their
bearskins heeling behind on their polls; like pot-house churls daring the
dursn't to come on. Of course they can fight. Who said no? But they 're
not the only ones: and they 'll miss their ranks before they can march
like our Irish lads. The look of their men in line is for all the world
to us what lack-lustre is to the eye. The drill they 've had hasn't
driven Hodge out of them, it has only stiffened the dolt; and dolt won't
do any longer; the military machine requires intelligence in all ranks
now. Ay, the time for the Celt is dawning: I see it, and I don't often
spy a spark where there isn't soon a blaze. Solidity and stupidity have
had their innings: a precious long innings it has been; and now they're
shoved aside like clods of earth from the risin flower. Off with our
shackles! We've only to determine it to be free, and we'll bloom again;
and I'll be the first to speak the word and mount the colours. Follow me!
Will ye join in the toast to the emblem of Erin--the shamrock, Phil and
Pat?'

'Oh, certainly,' said Philip. 'What 's that row going on?' Patrick also
called attention to the singular noise in the room. 'I fancy the time for
the Celt is not dawning, but setting,' said Philip, with a sharp smile;
and Patrick wore an artful look.

A corner of the room was guilty of the incessant alarum. Captain Con
gazed in that direction incredulously and with remonstrance. 'The tinkler
it is!' he sighed. 'But it can't be midnight yet?' Watches were examined.
Time stood at half-past the midnight. He groaned: 'I must go. I haven't
heard the tinkler for months. It signifies she's cold in her bed. The
thing called circulation's unknown to her save by the aid of outward
application, and I 'm the warming pan, as legitimately I should be, I'm
her husband and her Harvey in one. Goodbye to my hop and skip. I ought by
rights to have been down beside her at midnight. She's the worthiest
woman alive, and I don't shirk my duty. Be quiet!' he bellowed at the
alarum; 'I 'm coming. Don't be in such a fright, my dear,' he admonished
it as his wife, politely. 'Your hand'll take an hour to warm if you keep
it out on the spring that sets the creature going.' He turned and
informed his company: 'Her hand'll take an hour to warm. Dear! how she
runs ahead: d' ye hear? That's the female tongue, and once off it won't
stop. And this contrivance for fetching me from my tower to her bed was
my own suggestion, in a fit of generosity! Ireland all over! I must hurry
and wash my hair, for she can't bear a perfume to kill a stink; she
carries her charitable heart that far. Good-night, I'll be thinking of ye
while I'm warming her. Sit still, I can't wait; 'tis the secret of my
happiness.' He fled. Patrick struck his knee on hearing the expected
ballad-burden recur.

CHAPTER X

THE BROTHERS

'Con has learnt one secret,' said Philip, quitting his chair.

Patrick went up to him, and, 'Give us a hug,' he said, and the hug was
given.

They were of an equal height, tall young men, alert, nervously braced
from head to foot, with the differences between soldier and civilian
marked by the succintly military bearing of the elder brother, whose
movements were precise and prompt, and whose frame was leopardlike in
indolence. Beside him Patrick seemed cubbish, though beside another he
would not have appeared so. His features were not so brilliantly regular,
but were a fanciful sketch of the same design, showing a wider pattern of
the long square head and the forehead, a wavering at the dip of the nose,
livelier nostrils: the nostrils dilated and contracted, and were
exceeding alive. His eyelids had to do with the look of his eyes, and
were often seen cutting the ball. Philip's eyes were large on the pent of
his brows, open, liquid, and quick with the fire in him. Eyes of that
quality are the visible mind, animated both to speak it and to render it
what comes within their scope. They were full, unshaded direct, the man
himself, in action. Patrick's mouth had to be studied for an additional
index to the character. To symbolise them, they were as a sword-blade
lying beside book.

Men would have thought Patrick the slippery one of the two: women would
have inclined to confide in him the more thoroughly; they bring feeling
to the test, and do not so much read a print as read the imprinting on
themselves; and the report that a certain one of us is true as steel,
must be unanimous at a propitious hour to assure them completely that the
steel is not two-edged in the fully formed nature of a man whom they have
not tried. They are more at home with the unformed, which lends itself to
feeling and imagination. Besides Patrick came nearer to them; he showed
sensibility. They have it, and they deem it auspicious of goodness, or of
the gentleness acceptable as an equivalent. Not the less was Philip the
one to inspire the deeper and the wilder passion.

'So you've been down there?' said Philip. 'Tell us of your welcome. Never
mind why you went: I think I see. You're the Patrick of fourteen, who
tramped across Connaught for young Dermot to have a sight of you before
he died, poor lad. How did Mr. Adister receive you?'

Patrick described the first interview.

Philip mused over it. 'Yes, those are some of his ideas: gentlemen are to
excel in the knightly exercises. He used to fence excellently, and he was
a good horseman. The Jesuit seminary would have been hard for him to
swallow once. The house is a fine old house: lonely, I suppose.'

Patrick spoke of Caroline Adister and pursued his narrative. Philip was
lost in thought. At the conclusion, relating to South America, he raised
his head and said: 'Not so foolish as it struck you, Patrick. You and I
might do that,--without the design upon the original owner of the soil!
Irishmen are better out of Europe, unless they enter one of the
Continental services.'

'What is it Con O'Donnell proposes to you?' Patrick asked him earnestly.

'To be a speaking trumpet in Parliament. And to put it first among the
objections, I haven't an independence; not above two hundred a year.'

'I'll make it a thousand,' said Patrick, 'that is, if my people can pay.'

'Secondly, I don't want to give up my profession. Thirdly, fourthly,
fifthly, once there, I should be boiling with the rest. I never could go
half way. This idea of a commencement gives me a view of the finish.
Would you care to try it?'

'If I'm no wiser after two or three years of the world I mean to make a
better acquaintance with,' Patrick replied. 'Over there at home one
catches the fever, you know. They have my feelings, and part of my
judgement, and whether that's the weaker part I can't at present decide.
My taste is for quiet farming and breeding.'

'Friendship, as far as possible; union, if the terms are fair,' said
Philip. 'It's only the name of union now; supposing it a concession that
is asked of them; say, sacrifice; it might be made for the sake of what
our people would do to strengthen the nation. But they won't try to
understand our people. Their laws, and their rules, their systems are
forced on a race of an opposite temper, who would get on well enough, and
thrive, if they were properly consulted. Ireland 's the sore place of
England, and I'm sorry for it. We ought to be a solid square, with Europe
in this pickle. So I say, sitting here. What should I be saying in
Parliament?'

'Is Con at all likely, do you think, Philip?'

'He might: and become the burlesque Irishman of the House. There must be
one, and the lot would be safe to fall on him.'

'Isn't he serious about it?'

'Quite, I fancy; and that will be the fun. A serious fellow talking
nonsense with lively illustrations, is just the man for House of Commons
clown. Your humorous rogue is not half so taking. Con would be the
porpoise in a fish tank there, inscrutably busy on his errand and watched
for his tumblings. Better I than he; and I should make a worse of it--at
least for myself.'

'Wouldn't the secret of his happiness interfere?'

'If he has the secret inside his common sense. The bulk of it I suspect
to be, that he enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness; and so
the secret pulls both ways. One day a fit of pride may have him, or one
of his warm impulses, and if he's taken in the tide of it, I shall grieve
for the secret.'

'You like his wife, Philip?'

'I respect her. They came together,--I suppose, because they were near
together, like the two islands, in spite of the rolling waves between. I
would not willingly see the union disturbed. He warms her, and she houses
him. And he has to control the hot blood that does the warming, and she
to moderate the severity of her principles, which are an essential part
of the housing. Oh! shiver politics, Patrice. I wish I had been bred in
France: a couple of years with your Pere Clement, and I could have met
Irishmen and felt to them as an Irishman, whether they were disaffected
or not. I wish I did. When I landed the other day, I thought myself
passably cured, and could have said that rhetoric is the fire-water of
our country, and claptrap the springboard to send us diving into it. I
like my comrades-in-arms, I like the character of British officers, and
the men too--I get on well with them. I declare to you, Patrice, I burn
to live in brotherhood with them, not a rift of division at heart! I
never show them that there is one. But our early training has us; it
comes on us again; three or four days with Con have stirred me; I don't
let him see it, but they always do: these tales of starvations and
shootings, all the old work just as when I left, act on me like a smell
of powder. I was dipped in "Ireland for the Irish"; and a contented
Irishman scarcely seems my countryman.'

'I suppose it 's like what I hear of as digesting with difficulty,'
Patrick referred to the state described by his brother.

'And not the most agreeable of food,' Philip added.

'It would be the secret of our happiness to discover how to make the best
of it, if we had to pay penance for the discovery by living in an
Esquimaux shanty,' said Patrick.

'With a frozen fish of admirable principles for wife,' said Philip.

'Ah, you give me shudders!'

'And it's her guest who talks of her in that style! and I hope to be
thought a gentleman!' Philip pulled himself up. 'We may be all in the
wrong. The way to begin to think so, is to do them an injury and forget
it. The sensation's not unpleasant when it's other than a question of
good taste. But politics to bed, Patrice. My chief is right--soldiers
have nothing to do with them. What are you fiddling at in your coat
there?'

'Something for you, my dear Philip.' Patrick brought out the miniature.
He held it for his brother to look. 'It was the only thing I could get.
Mr. Adister sends it. The young lady, Miss Caroline, seconded me. They
think more of the big portrait: I don't. And it 's to be kept carefully,
in case of the other one getting damaged. That's only fair.'

Philip drank in the face upon a swift shot of his eyes.

'Mr. Adister sends it?' His tone implied wonder at such a change in
Adiante's father.

'And an invitation to you to visit him when you please.'

'That he might do,' said Philip: it was a lesser thing than to send her
likeness to him.

Patrick could not help dropping his voice: 'Isn't it very like?' For
answer the miniature had to be inspected closely.

Philip was a Spartan for keeping his feelings under.

'Yes,' he said, after an interval quick with fiery touches on the history
of that face and his life. 'Older, of course. They are the features, of
course. The likeness is not bad. I suppose it resembles her as she is
now, or was when it was painted. You 're an odd fellow to have asked for
it.'

'I thought you would wish to have it, Philip.'

'You're a good boy, Patrice. Light those candles we'll go to bed. I want
a cool head for such brains as I have, and bumping the pillow all night
is not exactly wholesome. We'll cross the Channel in a few days, and see
the nest, and the mother, and the girls.'

'Not St. George's Channel. Mother would rather you would go to France and
visit the De Reuils. She and the girls hope you will keep out of Ireland
for a time: it's hot. Judge if they're anxious, when it's to stop them
from seeing you, Philip!'

'Good-night, dear boy.' Philip checked the departing Patrick. 'You can
leave that.' He made a sign for the miniature to be left on the table.

Patrick laid it there. His brother had not touched it, and he could have
defended himself for having forgotten to leave it, on the plea that it
might prevent his brother from having his proper share of sleep; and
also, that Philip had no great pleasure in the possession of it. The two
pleas, however, did not make one harmonious apology, and he went straight
to the door in an odd silence, with the step of a decorous office-clerk,
keeping his shoulders turned on Philip to conceal his look of
destitution.

CHAPTER XI

INTRODUCING A NEW CHARACTER

Letters and telegrams and morning journals lay on the breakfast-table,
awaiting the members of the household with combustible matter. Bad news
from Ireland came upon ominous news from India. Philip had ten words of
mandate from his commanding officer, and they signified action, uncertain
where. He was the soldier at once, buckled tight and buttoned up over his
private sentiments. Vienna shot a line to Mrs. Adister O'Donnell. She
communicated it:'The Princess Nikolas has a son!' Captain Con tossed his
newspaper to the floor, crying:

'To-day the city'll be a chimney on fire, with the blacks in everybody's
faces; but I must go down. It's hen and chicks with the director of a
City Company. I must go.'

Did you say, madam?' Patrick inquired. 'A son,' said Mrs. Adister.

'And the military holloaing for reinforcements,' exclaimed Con. 'Pheu!
Phil!'

'That's what it comes to,' was Philip's answer. 'Precautionary measures,
eh?'

'You can make them provocative.' 'Will you beg for India?' 'I shall hear
in an hour.' 'Have we got men?'

'Always the question with us.'

'What a country!' sighed the captain. 'I'd compose ye a song of old
Drowsylid, except that it does no good to be singing it at the only time
when you can show her the consequences of her sluggery. A country of
compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot of the advance, and
while she's fighting on it's her poor business to be putting herself
together again: So she makes a mess of the beginning, to a certainty. If
it weren't that she had the army of Neptune about her--'

'The worst is she may some day start awake to discover that her
protecting deity 's been napping too.--A boy or girl did you say, my
dear?'

His wife replied: 'A son.'

'Ah! more births.' The captain appeared to be computing. 'But this one's
out of England: and it's a prince I suppose they'll call him: and princes
don't count in the population for more than finishing touches, like the
crossing of t's and dotting of i's, though true they're the costliest,
like some flowers and feathers, and they add to the lump on Barney's
back. But who has any compassion for a burdened donkey? unless when you
see him standing immortal meek! Well, and a child of some sort must have
been expected? Because it's no miracle after marriage: worse luck for the
crowded earth!'

'Things may not be expected which are profoundly distasteful,' Mrs.
Adister remarked.

'True,' said her sympathetic husband. ''Tis like reading the list of the
dead after a battle where you've not had the best of it--each name 's a
startling new blow. I'd offer to run to Earlsfont, but here's my company
you would have me join for the directoring of it, you know, my dear, to
ballast me, as you pretty clearly hinted; and all 's in the city to-day
like a loaf with bad yeast, thick as lead, and sour to boot. And a howl
and growl coming off the wilds of Old Ireland! We're smitten to-day in
our hearts and our pockets, and it 's a question where we ought to feel
it most, for the sake of our families.'

'Do you not observe that your cousins are not eating?' said his wife,
adding, to Patrick: 'I entertain the opinion that a sound
breakfast-appetite testifies to the proper vigour of men.'

'Better than a doctor's pass: and to their habits likewise,' Captain Con
winked at his guests, begging them to steal ten minutes out of the fray
for the inward fortification of them.

Eggs in the shell, and masses of eggs, bacon delicately thin and curling
like Apollo's locks at his temples, and cutlets, caviar, anchovies in the
state of oil, were pressed with the captain's fervid illustrations upon
the brothers, both meditatively nibbling toast and indifferent to the
similes he drew and applied to life from the little fish which had their
sharpness corrected but not cancelled by the improved liquid they swam
in. 'Like an Irishman in clover,' he said to his wife to pay her a
compliment and coax an acknowledgement: 'just the flavour of the salt of
him.'

Her mind was on her brother Edward, and she could not look sweet-oily, as
her husband wooed her to do, with impulse to act the thing he was
imagining.

'And there is to-morrow's dinner-party to the Mattocks: I cannot travel
to Earlsfont,' she said.

'Patrick is a disengaged young verderer, and knows the route, and has a
welcome face there, and he might go, if you're for having it performed by
word of mouth. But, trust me, my dear, bad news is best communicated by
telegraph, which gives us no stupid articles and particles to quarrel
with. "Boy born Vienna doctor smiling nurse laughing." That tells it all,
straight to the understanding, without any sickly circumlocutory stuff;
and there's nothing more offensive to us when we're hurt at intelligence.
For the same reason, Colonel Arthur couldn't go, since you'll want him to
meet the Mattocks?'

Captain Con's underlip shone with a roguish thinness.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15