Kitabı oku: «The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes», sayfa 22
CHAPTER XIX
There was a war of supremacy in the Kendal household. Albinia and her son were Greek to Greek, and if physical force were on her side, her own tenderness was against her. As to allies, Maurice had by far the majority of the household; the much-tormented Susan was her mistress’s sole supporter; Mr. Kendal and Sophy might own it inexpedient to foster his outrecuidance, but they so loved to do his bidding, so hated to thwart him, and so grieved at his being punished, that they were little better than Gilbert, Lucy, grandmamma, or any of the maids or men.
The moral sense was not yet stirred, and the boy seemed to be trying the force of his will like the strength of his limbs. Even as he delighted to lift a weight the moment he saw that it was heavy, so a command was to him a challenge to see how much he would undergo rather than obey, but his resistance was so open, gay, and free, that it could hardly be called obstinacy, and he gloried in disappointing punishment. The dark closet lost all terror for him; he stood there blowing the horn through his hand, content to follow an imaginary chase, and when untimely sent to bed, he stole Susan’s scissors, and cut a range of stables in the sheets. The short, sharp infliction of pain answered best, but his father, though he could give a shake when angry, could not strike when cool, and Albinia was forced to turn executioner, though with such tears and trembling that her culprit looked up reassuringly, saying, ‘Never mind, mamma, I shan’t!’ He did, however, mind her tears, they bore in upon him the sense of guilt; and after each transgression, he could not be at peace till he had marched up to her, holding out his hand for the blow, and making up his face not to wince, and then would cling round her neck to feel himself pardoned. Justice came to him in a most fair and motherly shape! The brightest, the merriest of all his playmates was mamma; he loved her passionately, and could endure no cloud between himself and her, so that he was slowly learning that submission to her was peace and pleasure, and rebellion mere pain to both. She established ten minutes of daily lessons, but even she could not reach beyond the capture of his restless person, his mind was out of reach, and keen as he was in everything else, towards “a + b = ab” he was an unmitigated dunce. Nor did he obey any one who did not use authority and force of will, and though perfectly simple and sincere, he was too young to restrain himself without the assistance of the controlling power, so that in his mother’s absence he was tyrannical and violent, and she never liked to have him out of her sight, and never was so sure that he was deep in mischief as when she had not heard his voice for a quarter of an hour.
‘Albinia,’ said Mr. Kendal, one relenting autumn day, when November strove to look like April, ‘I thought of walking to pay Farmer Graves for the corn. Will you come with me?’
‘Delightful, I want to see what Maurice will say to the turkey-cock.’
‘Is it not too far for him?’
‘He would run quite as many miles in the garden,’ said Albinia, who would have walked in dread of a court of justice on her return, had not the scarlet hose been safely prancing on the road before her.
‘This way, then,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘I must get this draft changed at the bank. Come, Maurice, you will see a friend there.’
‘Do you know, Edmund,’ said Albinia, as they set forth, ‘my conscience smites me as to that youth; I think we have neglected him.’
‘I cannot see what more we could have done. If his uncle does not bring him forward in society, we cannot interfere.’
‘It must be a forlorn condition,’ said Albinia; ‘he is above the other clerks, and he seems to be voted below the Bayford Elite, since the Polysyllable has made it so very refined! One never meets him anywhere now it is too dark to walk after the banking hours. Cannot we ask him to come in some evening?’
‘We cannot have our evenings broken up,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘I should be glad to show him any kindness, but his uncle seems to have ruled it that he is to be considered more as his clerk than as one of his family, and I doubt if it would be doing him any service to interfere.’
They were now at the respectable old freestone building, with ‘Goldsmith’ inscribed on the iron window-blinds, and a venerable date carved over the door. Inside, those blinds came high, and let in but little light over the tall desks, at which were placed the black-horsehair perches of the clerks, old Mr. Goldsmith himself occupying a lower throne, more accessible to the clients. One of the high stools stood empty, and Albinia making inquiry, Mr. Goldsmith answered, with a dry, dissatisfied cough, that More, as he called him, had struck work, and gone home with a headache.
‘Indeed,’ said Albinia, ‘I am sorry to hear it. Mr. Hope said he thought him not looking well.’
‘He has complained of headache a good deal lately,’ said Mr. Goldsmith. ‘Young men don’t find it easy to settle to business.’
Albinia’s heart smote her for not having thought more of her son’s rescuer, and she revolved what could or what might have been done. It really was not easy to show him attention, considering Gilbert’s prejudice against his accent, and Mr. Kendal’s dislike to an interrupted evening, and all she could devise was a future call on Miss Goldsmith. But for Maurice, it would have been a silent walk, and though her mind was a little diverted by his gallant attempt to bestride the largest pig in the farm-yard, she was sure Mr. Kendal was musing on the same topic, and was not surprised when, as they returned, he exclaimed, ‘I have a great mind to go and see after that poor lad.’
‘This way, then,’ said Albinia, turning down a narrow muddy street parallel with the river.
‘Impossible!’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘he can never live at the Wharves?’
‘Yes,’ said Albinia; ‘he told me that he lodged with an old servant of the Goldsmiths, Pratt’s wife, at the Lower Wharf.’
She pointed to the name of Pratt over a shop-window in a house that had once seen better days, but which looked so forlorn, that Mr. Kendal would not look the slatternly maid in the face while so absurd a question was asked as whether Mr. O’More lived there.
The girl, without further ceremony, took them up a dark stair, and opened the door of a twilight room, where Albinia’s first glimpse showed her the young man with his head bent down on his arms on the table, as close as possible to the forlorn, black fire, of the grim, dull, sulky coal of the county, which had filled the room with smoke and blacks. The window, opened to clear it, only admitted the sickly scent of decaying weed from the river to compete with the perfume of the cobbler’s stock-in-trade. Ulick started up pale and astonished, and Mr. Kendal, struck with consternation, chiefly thought of taking away his wife and child from the infected atmosphere, and made signs to Albinia not to sit down; but she was eagerly compassionate.
‘It was nothing,’ said Ulick, ‘only his head was rather worse than usual, and he thought it time to give in when the threes put lapwings’ feathers in their caps just like the fives.’
‘Are you subject to these headaches?’
‘It is only home-sickness,’ he said. ‘I’ll have got over it soon.’
‘I must come and see after you, my good friend,’ said Mr. Kendal, with suppressed impatience and anxiety. ‘I shall return in a moment or two, but I am sure you are not well enough for so many visitors taking you by surprise. Come.’
He was so peremptory, that Albinia found herself on the staircase before she knew what she was about. The fever panic had seized Mr. Kendal in full force; he believed typhus was in the air, and insisted on her taking Maurice home at once, while he went himself to fetch Mr. Bowles. She did not in the least credit fever to be in the chill touch of that lizard hand, and believed that she could have been the best doctor; but there was no arguing while he was under this alarm, and she knew that she might be thankful not to be ordered to observe a quarantine.
When Mr. Kendal returned home he looked much discomposed, though his first words were, ‘Thank Heaven, it is no fever! Albinia, we must look after that poor lad; he is positively poisoned by that pestiferous river and bad living! Bowles said he was sure he was not eating meat enough. I dare say that greasy woman gives him nothing fit to eat! Albinia, you must talk to him—find out whether old Goldsmith gives him a decent salary!’
‘He ought not to be in those lodgings another day. I suppose Miss Goldsmith had no notion what they were. I fancy she never saw the Lower Wharf in her life.’
‘I never did till to-day,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘It was all of a piece—the whole street—the room—the furniture—why the paper was coming off the walls! What could they be dreaming of! And there he was, trying to read a little edition of Prodentius, printed at Salamanca, which he picked up at a bookstall at Galway. It must have belonged to some priest educated in Spain. He says any Latin book was invaluable to him. He is infinitely too good for his situation, and the Goldsmiths are neglecting him infamously. Look out some rooms fit for him, Albinia.’
‘I will try. Let me see—if I could only recollect any; but Mr. Hope has the only really nice ones in the place.’
‘Somewhere he must be, if it is in this house.’
‘There is poor old Madame Belmarche’s still empty, with Bridget keeping it. I wish he could have rooms there.’
‘Well, why not? Pettilove told me it must be let as two tenements. If the old woman could take half, a lodger would pay her rent,’ said Mr. Kendal, promptly. ‘You had better propose it.’
‘And the Goldsmiths?’ asked Albinia.
‘I will show him the Lower Wharf.’
The next afternoon Mr. Kendal desired his wife to go to the Bank and borrow young O’More for her walking companion.
‘Really I don’t know whether I have the impudence.’
‘I will come and do it for you. You will do best alone with the lad; I want you to get into his confidence, and find out whether old Goldsmith treats him properly. I declare, but that I know John Kendal so well, this would be enough to make me rejoice that Gilbert is not thrown on the world!’
Albinia knew herself to be so tactless, that she saw little hope other doing anything but setting him against his relations; but her husband was in no frame to hear objections, so she made none, and only trusted she should not be very foolish. At least, the walk would be a positive physical benefit to the slave of the desk.
Ulick O’More was at his post, and said his head was well, but his hair stuck up as if his fingers had been many times run through it; he was much thinner, and the wearied countenance, whitened complexion, and spiritless sunken eyes, were a sad contrast to the glowing freshness and life that had distinguished him in the summer.
Mr. Kendal told the Banker that it had been decided that his nephew needed exercise, and that Mrs. Kendal would be glad of his company in a long walk. Mr. Goldsmith seemed rather surprised, but consented, whereupon the young clerk lighted up into animation, and bounded out of his prison house, with a springy step learnt upon mountain heather. Mr. Kendal only waited to hear whither they were bound.
‘Oh! as far as we can go on the Woodside road,’ said Albinia. ‘I think the prescription I used to inflict on poor Sophy will not be thrown away here. I always fancy there is a whiff of sea air upon the hill there.’
Ulick smiled at such a fond delusion, bred up as he had been upon the wildest sea-coast, exposed to the full sweep of the Atlantic storm! She set him off upon his own scenery, to the destruction of his laborious English, as he dwelt on the glories of his beloved rocks rent by fierce sea winds and waves into fantastic, grotesque, or lovely shapes, with fiords of exquisite blue sea between, the variety of which had been to him as the gentle foliage of tamer countries. Not a tree stood near the ‘town’ of Ballymakilty, but the wild crags, the sparkling waters, the broad open hills, and the bogs, with their intensely purple horizon, held fast upon his heart; and he told of white sands, reported to be haunted by mermaids, and crevices of rock where the tide roared, and gave rise to legends of sea monsters, and giants turned to stone. He was becoming confidential and intimate when, in a lowered voice, he mentioned the Banshee’s crag, where the shrouded messenger of doom never failed to bewail each dying child of the O’More, and where his own old nurse had actually beheld her keening for the uncle who was killed among the Caffres. Albinia began to know how she ought to respect the O’Mores.
They were skirting the side of the hill, with a dip of green meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices. The twang of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia that the hunting season had begun, and looking over a gate, she watched the parti-coloured forms of the dogs glancing among the brushwood opposite, and an occasional red coat gleaming out through the hedge above. Just then the cry ceased, the dogs became silent, and scattered hither and thither bewildered. Ulick looked eagerly, then suddenly vaulted over the gate, went forward a few steps, looked again, pointed towards some dark object which she could barely discern, put his finger in his ear, and uttered an unearthly screech, incomprehensible to her, but well understood by the huntsman, and through him by the dogs, which at once simultaneously dashed in one direction, and came pouring into the meadow over towards him, down went their heads, up went their curved tails, the clatter and rushing of hoofs, and the apparition of red coats, showed the hunters all going round the copse, while at the same moment, away with winged steps bounded her companion, flying headlong like the wind, so as to meet the hunt.
‘Ask me not what the lady feels,
Left in that dreadful hour alone,’
laughed Albinia to herself. ‘Well done, speed! Edmund might be satisfied there’s not much amiss! Through the hedge—over the meadow—a flying leap over the stream—it is more like a bird than a man—up again. Does he mean to follow the hunt all the rest of the way? Rather Irish, I must say! And I do believe they will all come down this lane! I must walk on; it wont do to be overtaken here between these high hedges. Ah! I thought he was too much of a gentleman to leave me—here he comes. How much in his way I must be! I never saw such a runner; not a bit does he slacken for the hill—and what bright cheeks and eyes! What good it must have done him!’
‘I beg ten thousand pardons!’ cried he, as he came up, scarcely out of breath. ‘I declare I forgot you, I could not help it, when I saw them at a check!’
‘You feel for the hunter as I do for the fox,’ said Albinia. ‘Is yours one of the great hunting neighbourhoods?’
‘That it is!’ he cried. ‘My grandfather had the grand stud! He and his seven sons were out three times in the week, and there was a mount for whoever wanted it!’
‘And this generation is not behind the last?’
‘Ah! and why would it be?’ exclaimed the boy, the last remnant of English pronunciation forsaking him. ‘My Uncle Connel has the best mare on this side the bridge of Athlone! I mean that side.’
‘And how is it with you?’ asked Albinia.
‘We’ve got no horses—that is, except my father’s mare, and the colt, and Fir Darrig—the swish-tailed pony—and the blind donkey that brings in the turf. So we younger ones mostly go hunting on foot; and after all I believe that’s the best sport. Bryan always comes in before any of the horses, and we all think it a shame if we don’t!’
‘I see where you learnt the swiftness of foot that was so useful last July,’ said Albinia.
‘That? oh! but Bryan would have been up long before me,’ said Ulick. ‘He’d have made for the lock, not the gate! You should see what sport we have when the fox takes to the Corrig Dearg up among the rocks—and little Rosie upon Fir Darrig, with her hair upon the wind, and her colour like the morning cloud, glancing in and out among the rocks like the fairy of the glen. There are those that think her the best part of the hunt; they say the English officers at Ochlochtimore would never think it worth coming out but for her. I don’t believe that, you know,’ he added, laughing, ‘though I like to fetch a rise out of Ulick at the great house by telling him of it.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Fifteen last April, and she is like an April wind, when it comes warm and frolicking over the sea! So wild and free, and yet so gentle and soft! Ellen and Mary are grave and steady, and work hard—every stitch of my stockings was poor Mary’s knitting, except what poor old Peggy would send up for a compliment; but Rosie—I don’t think she does a thing but sing, and ride, and row the boat, and keep the house alive! My mother shakes her head, but I don’t know what she’ll say when she gets my aunt’s letter. My Aunt Goldsmith purses up her lips, and says, “I’ll write to advise my sister to send her daughters to some good school.” Ellen, maybe, might bear one, but ah! the thought of little Rosie in a good school!’
‘Like her brother Ulick in a good bank, eh?’
‘Why,’ he cried, ‘they always called me the steady Englishman!’
Albinia laughed, but at that moment the sounds of the hunt again occupied them, and all were interpreted by Ulick with the keenest interest, but he would not run away again, though she exhorted him not to regard her. Presently it swept on out of hearing, and by-and-bye they reached the summit of the hill, and looked forth on the dark pine plantations on the opposite undulation, standing out in black relief against a sky golden with a pale, pure, pearly November sunset, a ‘daffodil sky’ flecked with tiny fleeces of soft bright-yellow light, reminding Albinia of Fouque’s beautiful dream of Aslauga’s golden hair showing the gates of Heaven to her devoted knight. She looked for her companion’s sympathy in her admiration, but the woods seemed to oppress him, and his panting sigh showed how real a thing was he-men.
‘Oh! my poor sun!’ he broke out, ‘I pity you for having to go down before your time into these black, stifling woods that rise up to smother you like giants—and not into your own broad, cool Atlantic, laughing up your own sparkles of light.’
‘We inland people can hardly appreciate your longing for space.’
‘It’s a very prison,’ said Ulick; ‘the horizon is choked all round, and one can’t breathe in these staid stiff hedges and enclosures!’ And he threw out his arms and flapped them over his breast with a gesture of constraint.
‘You seem no friend to cultivation.’
‘Why, your meadows would be pretty things if they were a little greener,’ said Ulick; ‘but one gets tired of them, and of those straight lines of ploughed field. There’s no sense of liberty; it is like the man whose prison walls closed in upon him!’ And he gave another weary sigh, his step lost elasticity, and he moved on heavily.
‘You are tired; I have brought you too far.’
‘Tired by a bit of a step like this?’ cried the boy, disdainfully, as he straightened himself, and resumed his brisk tread. But it did not last.
‘I had forgotten that you had not been well,’ she said.
‘Pshaw!’ muttered Ulick; then resumed, ‘Aye, Mr. Kendal brought in the doctor upon me—very kind of him—but I do assure you ‘tis nothing but home sickness; I was nearly as bad when I went to St. Columba, but I got over it then, and I will again!’
‘It may be so in part,’ said Albinia, kindly; ‘but let me be impertinent, Ulick, for my sister Winifred told me to look after you; surely you give it every provocation. Such a change of habits is enough to make any one ill. Should you not ask your uncle for a holiday, and go home for a little while?’
‘Don’t name it, I beg of you,’ cried the poor lad in an agitated voice, ‘it would only bring it all over again! I’ve promised my mother to do my part, and with His help I will! Let the columns run out to all eternity, and the figures crook themselves as spitefully as they will, I’ve vowed to myself not to stir till I’ve got the better of the villains!’
‘Ah!’ said Albinia, ‘they have blackened your eyes like the bruises of material antagonists! Yes, it is a gallant battle, but indeed you must give yourself all the help you can, for it would be doing your mother no good to fall ill.’
‘I’ve no fears,’ said Ulick; ‘I know very well what is the matter with me, and that if I don’t give way, it will go off in time. You’ve given it a good shove with your kindness, Mrs. Kendal,’ he added, with deep emotion in his sensitive voice; ‘only you must not talk of my going home, or you’ll undo all you have done.’
‘Then I won’t; we must try to make you a home here. And in the first place, those lodgings of yours; you can never be comfortable in them.’
‘Ah! you saw my fire smoking. I never shall learn to make a coal fire burn.’
‘Not only that,’ said Albinia, ‘but you might easily find rooms much better furnished, and fitter for you.’
‘I do assure you,’ exclaimed Ulick, ‘you scarcely saw it! Why, I don’t think there’s a room at the big house in better order, or so good!’
‘At least,’ said Albinia, repressing her deduction as to the big house of Ballymakilty, ‘you have no particular love for the locality—the river smell—the stock of good leather, &c.’
‘It’s all Bayford and town smell together,’ said Ulick; ‘I never thought one part worse than another, begging your pardon, Mrs. Kendal.’
‘And I am sure,’ she continued, ‘that woman can never make your meals comfortable. Yes, I see I am right, and I assure you hard head-work needs good living, and you will never be a match for the rogues in black and white without good beef-steaks. Now confess whether she gives you dinners of old shoe-leather.’
‘A man can’t sit down to dinner by himself,’ cried Ulick, impatiently. ‘Tea with a book are all that is bearable.’
‘And you never go out—never see any one.’
‘I dine at my uncle’s every Sunday,’ said Ulick.
‘Is that all the variety you have?’
‘Why, my uncle told me he would not have me getting into what he calls idle company. I’ve dined once at the vicarage, and drunk tea twice with Mr. Hope, but it is no use thinking of it—I couldn’t afford it, and that’s the truth.’
‘Have you any books? What can you find to do all the evening?’
‘I have a few that bear reading pretty often, and Mr. Hope as lent me some. I’ve been trying to keep up my Greek, and then I do believe there’s some way of simplifying those accounts by logarithms, if I could but work it out. But my mother told me to walk, and I assure you I do take a constitutional as soon as I come out at half-past four every day.’
‘Well, I have designs, and mind you don’t traverse them, or I shall have to report you at home. I have a lodging in my eye for you, away from the river, and a nice clean, tidy Irishwoman to keep you in order, make your fires, and cram you, if you wont eat, and see if she does not make a man of you—’
‘Stop, stop, Mrs. Kendal!’ cried Ulick, distressed. ‘You are very kind, but it can’t be.’
‘Excuse me, it is economy of the wrong sort to live in a gutter, and catch agues and fevers. Only think, if it was my boy Gilbert, should I not be obliged to any one that would tyrannize over him for his good! Besides, what I propose is not at all beyond such means as Mr. Kendal tells me are the least Mr. Goldsmith ought to give you. Do you dislike going into particulars with me? You know I am used to think for Gilbert, and I am a sort of cousin.’
‘You are kindness itself,’ said Ulick; ‘and there! I suppose I must go to the bottom of it, and it is no news that pence are not plenty among the O’Mores, though it is no fault of my uncle. See there what my poor dear mother says.’
He drew a letter from his pocket, and gave a page to her.
‘I miss you sorely, my boy,’ it said; ‘I know the more what a support and friend you have been to me now that you are so far away; but all is made up to me in knowing you to be among my own people, and the instrument of reconciliation with my brother, as you well know how great has been the pain of the estrangement caused by my own pride and wilfulness. I cannot tell you how glad I am that he approves of you, and that you are beginning to get used to the work that was my own poor father’s for so long. Bred up as you have been, my mountain lad, I scarcely dared to hope that you would be able to sit down quietly to it, with all our hopes of making you a scholar so suddenly frustrated; but I might have put faith in your loving heart and sense of duty to carry you through anything. I feel as if a load were off my mind since you and Bryan are so happily launched. The boy has not once applied for money since he joined; and if you write to him, pray beg him to be careful, for it would well-nigh drive your father mad to be pressed any more—the poor mare has been sold at a dead loss and the Carrick-humbug quarry company pays no dividends, so how we are to meet the Christmas bills I cannot guess. But, as you remember, we have won over worse times, and now Providence has been so good to you and Bryan, what have I to do but be thankful and hope the best.’
Ulick watched her face, and gave her another note, saying mournfully, ‘You see they all, but my mother, think, that if I am dragging our family honour through the mire, I’ve got something by it. Poor Bryan, he knows no better—he’s younger than me by two years.’
The young ensign made a piteous confession of the first debt he had been able to contract, for twenty pounds, with a promise that if his brother would help him out of this one scrape, he would never run into another.
‘I am very sorry for you, Ulick,’ said Albinia, ‘and I hate to advise you to be selfish, but it really is quite impossible for you to be paymaster for all your brothers’ debts.’
‘If it were Connel, I know it would be of no use,’ said Ulick. ‘But Bryan—you see he has got a start—they gave him a commission, and he is the finest fellow of us all, and knows what his word is, and keeps it! Maybe, if I get on, I may be able to save, and help him to his next step, and then if Redmond could get to college, my mother would be a happy woman, and all thanks to my uncle.’
‘Then it is this twenty pounds that is pinching you now? Is that it?’
‘You see my uncle said he would give me enough to keep me as a gentleman and his nephew, but not enough to keep all the family, as he said. After my Christmas quarter I shall be up in the world again, and then there will be time to think of the woman you spoke of—a Connaught woman, did you say?’
When Albinia reported this dialogue to her husband, he was much moved by this simple self-abnegation.
‘There is nothing for it,’ he said, ‘but to bring him here till Christmas, and by that time we will take care that the new lodgings are cheap enough for him. He must not be left to the mercy of old Goldsmith and his sister!’
Even Albinia was astonished, but Mr. Kendal carried out his intentions, and went in quest of his new friend; while no one thought of objecting except grandmamma.
‘I suppose, my dear,’ she said, ‘that you know what Mr. Goldsmith means to do for this young man.’
‘I am sure I don’t,’ said Albinia.
‘Really! Ah! well, I’m an old woman, and I may be wrong, but my poor dear Mr. Meadows would never encourage a banker’s clerk about the house unless he knew what were his expectations. Irish too! If there was a thing Mr. Meadows disliked more than another, it was an Irishman! He said they were all adventurers.’
However, Ulick’s first evening at Willow Lawn was on what he called ‘a headache day.’ He could not have taken a better measure for overcoming grandmamma’s objections. Poor dear Mr. Meadows’ worldly wisdom was not sufficiently native to her to withstand the sight of anything so pale and suffering, especially as he did not rebel against answering her close examination, which concluded in her pronouncing these intermitting attacks to be agueish, and prescribing quinine. To take medicines is an effectual way of gaining an old lady’s love. Ulick was soon established in her mind as ‘a very pretty behaved young gentleman.’
In the evenings, when Mr. Kendal read aloud, Ulick listened, and enjoyed it from the corner where he sheltered his eyes from the light. He was told that he ought to go to bed quickly, but after the ladies were in their rooms, a long buzzing murmur was heard in the passage, and judicious peeping revealed the two gentlemen, each, candle in hand, the one with his back against the wall at the top of the stairs, the other leaning upon the balusters three steps below, and there they stayed, till the clock struck one, and Ulick’s candle burnt out.
‘What could you be talking about?’ asked the aggrieved Albinia.
‘Prometheus Vinctus,’ composedly returned Mr. Kendal.
Ulick’s eagerness in collecting every crumb of scholarship was a great bond of union; but there was still more in the bright, open, demonstrative nature of the youth, which had a great attraction for the reserved, serious Mr. Kendal, and scarcely a day had passed before they were on terms of intimacy, almost like an elder and younger brother. Admitted into the family as a connexion, Ulick at once viewed the girls as cousins, and treated them with the same easy grace of good-natured familiarity as if they had been any of the nineteen Miss O’Mores around Ballymakilty.
‘How is your head now?’ asked Mr. Kendal. ‘You are late this evening.’
‘Yes,’ said Ulick, entering the drawing-room, which was ruddy with firelight, and fragrant with the breath of the conservatory, and leaning over an arm-chair, as he tried to rub the aching out of his brow; ‘there were some accounts to finish up and my additions came out different every time.’
‘A sure sign that you ought to have left off.’
‘I was just going to have told my uncle I was good for nothing to-day, when I heard old Johns mumbling something to him about Mr. More being unwell, and looking up, I saw that cold grey eye twinkling at me, as much as to say he was proud to see how soon an Irishman could be beaten. So what could I do but give him look for look, and go on with eight and seven, and five and two, as unconcerned as he was.’
