Part 8 (1/2)

”I'll show you, then. There's a kind of janius natural to men like myself,--in Ireland I mean, for I never heerd of it elsewhere,--that's just like our Irish emerald or Irish diamond,--wonderful if one considers where you find it, astonis.h.i.+n' if you only think how azy it is to get, but a regular disappointment, a downright take-in, if you intend to have it cut and polished and set. No, sir; with all the care and culture in life, you 'll never make a precious stone of it!”

”You've not taken the right way to convince me, by using such an ill.u.s.tration, Billy.”

”I 'll try another, then,” said Billy. ”We are like w.i.l.l.y-the-Whisps, showing plenty of light where there's no road to travel, but of no manner of use on the highway, or in the dark streets of a village where one has business.”

”Your own services here are the refutation to your argument, Billy,”

said Harcourt, filling his gla.s.s.

”'Tis your kindness to say so, sir,” said Billy, with gratified pride; ”but the sacrat was, he thrusted me,--that was the whole of it. All the miracles of physic is confidence, just as all the magic of eloquence is conviction.”

”You have reflected profoundly, I see,” said Harcourt.

”I made a great many observations at one time of my life,--the opportunity was favorable.”

”When and how was that?”

”I travelled with a baste caravan for two years, sir; and there's nothing taches one to know mankind like the study of bastes!”

”Not complimentary to humanity, certainly,” said Harcourt, laughing.

”Yes, but it is, though; for it is by a consideration of the _fero naturo_ that you get at the raal nature of mere animal existence. You see there man in the rough, as a body might say, just as he was turned out of the first workshop, and before he was infiltrated with the _divinus afflatus_, the ethereal essence, that makes him the first of creation. There 's all the qualities, good and bad,--love, hate, vengeance, grat.i.tude, grief, joy, ay, and mirth,--there they are in the brutes; but they 're in no subjection, except by fear. Now, it's out of man's motives his character is moulded, and fear is only one amongst them. D' ye apprehend me?”

”Perfectly; fill your pipe.” And he pushed the tobacco towards him.

”I will; and I 'll drink the memory of the great and good man that first intro-duced the weed amongst us--Here's Sir Walter Raleigh! By the same token, I was in his house last week.”

”In his house! where?”

”Down at Greyhall. You Englishmen, savin' your presence, always forget that many of your celebrities lived years in Ireland; for it was the same long ago as now,--a place of decent banishment for men of janius, a kind of straw-yard where ye turned out your intellectual hunters till the sayson came on at home.”

”I 'm sorry to see, Billy, that, with all your enlightenment, you have the vulgar prejudice against the Saxon.”

”And that's the rayson I have it, because it is vulgar,” said Billy, eagerly. ”Vulgar means popular, common to many; and what's the best test of truth in anything but universal belief, or whatever comes nearest to it? I wish I was in Parliament--I just wish I was there the first night one of the n.o.bs calls out 'That 's vulgar;' and I 'd just say to him, 'Is there anything as vulgar as men and women? Show me one good thing in life that is n't vulgar! Show me an object a painter copies, or a poet describes, that is n't so!' Ayeh,” cried he, impatiently, ”when they wanted a hard word to fling at us, why didn't they take the right one?”

”But you are unjust, Billy; the ungenerous tone you speak of is fast disappearing. Gentlemen nowadays use no disparaging epithets to men poorer or less happily circ.u.mstanced than themselves.”

”Faix,” said Billy, ”it isn't sitting here at the same table with yourself that I ought to gainsay that remark.”

And Harcourt was so struck by the air of good breeding in which he spoke, that he grasped his hand, and shook it warmly.

”And what is more,” continued Billy, ”from this day out I 'll never think so.”

He drank off his gla.s.s as he spoke, giving to the libation all the ceremony of a solemn vow.

”D' ye hear that?--them's oars; there's a boat coming in.”

”You have sharp hearing, master,” said Harcourt, laughing.

”I got the gift when I was a smuggler,” replied he. ”I could put my ear to the ground of a still night, and tell you the tramp of a revenue boot as well as if I seen it. And now I'll lay sixpence it's Pat Morissy is at the bow oar there; he rows with a short jerking stroke there 's no timing. That's himself, and it must be something urgent from the post-office that brings him over the lough to-night.”