Volume I Part 15 (1/2)

CHAPTER X. BEING ”BORED”

It is a high testimony to that order of architecture which we call castle-building, that no man ever lived in a house so fine he could not build one more stately still out of his imagination. Nor is it only to grandeur and splendor this superiority extends, but it can invest lowly situations and homely places with a charm which, alas! no reality can rival.

Conyers was a fortunate fellow in a number of ways; he was young, good-looking, healthy, and rich. Fate had made place for him on the very sunniest side of the causeway, and, with all that, he was happier on that day, through the mere play of his fancy, than all his wealth could have made him. He had fas.h.i.+oned out a life for himself in that cottage, very charming, and very enjoyable in its way. He would make it such a spot that it would have resources for him on every hand, and he hugged himself in the thought of coming down here with a friend, or, perhaps, two friends, to pa.s.s days of that luxurious indolence so fascinating to those who are, or fancy they are, wearied of life's pomps and vanities.

Now there are no such scoffers at the frivolity and emptiness of human wishes as the well-to-do young fellows of two or three-and-twenty.

They know the ”whole thing,” and its utter rottenness. They smile compa.s.sionately at the eagerness of all around them; they look with bland pity at the race, and contemptuously ask, of what value the prize when it is won? They do their very best to be gloomy moralists, but they cannot. They might as well try to s.h.i.+ver when they sit in the suns.h.i.+ne.

The vigorous beat of young hearts, and the full tide of young pulses, will tell against all the mock misanthropy that ever was fabricated! It would not be exactly fair to rank Conyers in this school, and yet he was not totally exempt from some of its teachings. Who knows if these little imaginary glooms, these brain-created miseries, are not a kind of moral ”alterative” which, though depressing at the instant, render the const.i.tution only more vigorous after?

At all events, he had resolved to have the cottage, and, going practically to work, he called Darby to his counsels to tell him the extent of the place, its boundaries, and whatever information he could afford as to the tenure and its rent.

”You 'd be for buying it, your honor!” said Darby, with the keen quick-sightedness of his order.

”Perhaps I had some thoughts of the kind; and, if so, I should keep you on.”

Darby bowed his grat.i.tude very respectfully. It was too long a vista for him to strain his eyes at, and so he made no profuse display of thankfulness. With all their imaginative tendencies, the lower Irish are a very bird-in-the-hand sort of people.

”Not more than seventeen acres!” cried Conyers, in astonishment. ”Why, I should have guessed about forty, at least. Isn't that wood there part of it?”

”Yes, but it's only a strip, and the trees that you see yonder is in Carriclough; and them two meadows below the salmon weir is n't ours at all; and the island itself we have only a lease of it.”

”It's all in capital repair, well kept, well looked after?”

”Well, it is, and isn't!” said he, with a look of disagreement. ”He'd have one thing, and she'd have another; _he_ 'd spend every s.h.i.+lling he could get on the place, and _she_ 'd grudge a brush of paint, or a coat of whitewash, just to keep things together.”

”I see nothing amiss here,” said Conyers, looking around him. ”n.o.body could ask or wish a cottage to be neater, better furnished, or more comfortable. I confess I do not perceive anything wanting.”

”Oh, to be sure, it's very nate, as your honor says; but then--” And he scratched his head, and looked confused.

”But then, what--out with it?”

”The earwigs is dreadful; wherever there 's roses and sweetbrier there's no livin' with them. Open the window and the place is full of them.”

Mistaking the surprise he saw depicted in his hearer's face for terror, Darby launched forth into a description of insect and reptile tortures that might have suited the tropics; to hear him, all the stories of the white ant of India, or the gallinipper of Demerara, were nothing to the destructive powers of the Irish earwig. The place was known for them all over the country, and it was years and years lying empty, ”by rayson of thim plagues.”

Now, if Conyers was not intimidated to the full extent Darby intended by this account, he was just as far from guessing the secret cause of this representation, which was simply a long-settled plan of succeeding himself to the owners.h.i.+p of the ”Fisherman's Home,” when, either from the course of nature or an accident, a vacancy would occur. It was the grand dream of Darby's life, the island of his Government, his seat in the Cabinet, his Judges.h.i.+p, his Garter, his everything, in short, that makes human ambition like a cup brimful and overflowing; and what a terrible reverse would it be if all these hopes were to be dashed just to gratify the pa.s.sing caprice of a mere traveller!

”I don't suppose your honor cares for money, and, maybe, you 'd as soon pay twice over the worth of anything; but here, between our two selves, I can tell you, you 'd buy an estate in the county cheaper than this little place. They think, because they planted most of the trees and made the fences themselves, that it's like the King's Park. It's a fancy spot, and a fancy price, they'll ask for it But I know of another worth ten of it,--a real, elegant place; to be sure, it's a trifle out of repair, for the ould naygur that has it won't lay out a sixpence, but there 's every con-vaniency in life about it. There's the finest cup potatoes, the biggest turnips ever I see on it, and fish jumpin' into the parlor-window, and hares runnin' about like rats.”

”I don't care for all that; this cottage and these grounds here have taken my fancy.”

”And why would n't the other, when you seen it? The ould Major that lives there wants to sell it, and you 'd get it a raal bargain. Let me row your honor up there this evening. It's not two miles off, and the river beautiful all the way.”

Conyers rejected the proposal abruptly, haughtily. Darby had dared to throw down a very imposing card-edifice, and for the moment the fellow was odious to him. All the golden visions of his early morning, that poetized life he was to lead, that elegant pastoralism, which was to blend the splendor of Lucullus with the simplicity of a t.i.tyrus, all rent, torn, and scattered by a vile hind, who had not even a conception of the ruin he had caused.

And yet Darby had a misty consciousness of some success. He did not, indeed, know that his sh.e.l.l had exploded in a magazine; but he saw, from the confusion in the garrison, that his shot had told severely somewhere.

”Maybe your honor would rather go to-morrow? or maybe you 'd like the Major to come up here himself, and speak to you?”