The Knight Of Gwynne Volume I Part 56

'Where's Bully Dodd?--Where's the Bully?' I suppose you know the fellow?"

"The man that was transported?"

"The same. The greatest ruffian the country was cursed with. He came at the call, without coat or waistcoat, his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves tucked up to his shoulders, and a handkerchief round his waist ready for a fight. There was an old quarrel between us, for it was I captured the fellow the day after he burnt down Dawson's house. He came towards me, the mob opening a way for him, with a pewter pot of porter in his hand.

"'We want you to dhrink a toast for us, Mr. Daly,' said he, with a marked courtesy, and a grin that amused the fellows around him. 'You were always a patriot, and won't make any objections to it.'

"'What is the liquor?' said I.

"'Good porter,--divil a less,' cried the mob; 'Mol Heavyside's best.'

And so I took the vessel in my hands, and before they could say a syllable, drained it to the bottom; for I was very thirsty with the ride, and in want of something to refresh myself.

"'But you did n't dhrink the toast,' said Dodd savagely.

"'Where was the toast? He didn't say the words,' shouted the mob.

"'Off with his hat, and make him drink it,' cried out several others from a distance. They saved me one part of the trouble, for they knocked off my hat with a stone.

"'Here's health and long life to Hickman O'Reilly!' cried out Dodd,--'that's the toast.'

"'And what have I to wish him either?' said I, while at the same time I tore open the pewter measure, and then with one strong dash of my band drove it down on the ruffian's head, down to the very brows. I lost no time afterwards, but, striking right and left, plunged forwards; the mob fled as I followed, and by good luck the carthorses, getting frightened, sprang forward also, and so I rode on with a few slight cuts; a stone or two struck me, nothing more; but they 'll need a plumber to rid my friend Dodd of his helmet."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 424]

"And we used to call this town our own," said Lionel, bitterly.

"Nothing is a man's own but his honor, sir. That base cowardice yonder believes itself honest and independent, as if a single right feeling, a single good or virtuous thought, could consort with habits like theirs; but they are less base than those who instigate them. The real scoundrels are the Hickmans of this world, the men who compensate for low birth and plebeian origin by calumniating the wellborn and the n.o.ble.--What is Flury wanting here?" said he, as, attracted by Daly's narrative, the poor fellow had drawn near to listen.

"'I 'm glad you put the pewter pot on the Bully's head, he 's a disgrace to the town," said Flury, with a laugh; and he turned away, as if enjoying the downfall of an enemy.

"Oh! I see," said Daly, taking up one of the papers that had fallen to the ground, "this is the first act of the drama. Come along, Lionel, let us talk of matters nearer to our hearts."

They walked along together to the library, each silently following his own train of thought, and for some time neither seemed disposed to speak. Lionel at length broke silence, as he said,--

"I have been thinking over it, and am convinced my father will never be able to endure this life of inactivity before him."

"That is exactly the fear I entertain myself for him; altered fortunes will impress themselves more in the diminished sphere to which his influence and utility will be reduced, than in anything else: but how to remedy this?"

"I have been considering that also; but you must advise me if the plan be a likely one. He held the rank of colonel once--"

"To be sure he did, and with good right,--he raised the regiment himself. Darcy's Light Horse were as handsome a set of fellows as the service could boast of."

"Well, then, my notion is, that although the Government did not buy his vote on the Union, there would be no just reason why they should not appoint him to some one of those hundred situations which the service includes. His former rank, his connection and position, his unmerited misfortunes, are, in some sense, claims. I can scarcely suppose his opposition in Parliament would be remembered against him at such a moment."

"I hardly think it would," said Daly, musingly; "there is much in what you propose. Would Lord Netherby support such a request if it were made?"

"He could not well decline it; almost the last thing he said at parting was, that whatever favor he enjoyed should be gladly employed in our behalf. Besides, we really seek nothing to which we may not lay fair and honest claim. My intention would be to write at once to Lord Netherby.

acquainting him briefly with our altered fortunes."

"The more briefly on that topic the better," said Daly, dryly.

"To mention my father's military rank and services, to state that, having raised and equipped a company at his own expense, without accepting the slightest aid from the Government, now, in his present change of condition, he would be proud of any recognition of those services which once he was but too happy to render unrewarded by the Crown. There are many positions, more or less lucrative, which would well become him, and which no right-minded gentleman could say were ill-bestowed on such a man."

"All true," said Daly, whose eye brightened as he gazed on the youth, whose character seemed already about to develop itself under the pressure of misfortune with traits of more thoughtful meaning than yet appeared iu him.

"Then I will write to Lord Netherby at once," resumed Lionel; "there can be no indelicacy in making such a request: he is our relative, the nearest my mother has."

"He is far better, he 's a Lord in Waiting, and a very subtle courtier,"

said Daly. "Write this day, and, if you like it, I 'll dictate the letter."

Lionel accepted the offer with all the pleasure possible. He had been from boyhood a firm believer in the resources and skill of Daly in every possible contingency of life, and looked on him as one of those persons who invariably succeed when everybody else fails.

There is a species of prompt.i.tude in action, the fruit generally of a strong will and a quick imagination, which young men mistake for a much higher gift, and estimate at a price very far above its value. Bagenal Daly had, however, other qualities than these; but truth compels us to own that, in Lionel's eyes, his supremacy on such grounds was no small merit. He had ever found him ready for every emergency, prompt to decide, no less quick to act, and, without stopping to inquire how far success followed such rapid resolves, this very energy charmed him. It was, then, in perfect confidence in the skill and address of his adviser that Lionel sat down, pen in hand, to write at his dictation.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI. THE LAW AND ITS CHANCES.

We left Mr. Daly at the conclusion of our last chapter in the exercise of--what to him was always a critical matter--the functions of a polite letter-writer. His faults, it is but justice to say, were much less those of style than of the individual himself; for if he rarely failed to convey a clear notion of his views and intentions, he still more rarely omitted to impart considerable insight into his own character.

His abrupt and broken sentences, his sudden outbreaks of intelligence or pa.s.sion, were not inaptly conveyed by the character of a handwriting which was bold, careless, and hurried. Indifferent to everything like neatness or accuracy, generally blotted, and never very legible, these defects, if they did not palliate, they might, in a measure, explain something of his habits of thought and action; but now, when about to dictate to another, the case was different, and those interruptions which Daly would have set down by a dash of his pen, were to be conveyed by the less significant medium of mere blanks.

"I 'm ready," said Lionel, at length, as he sat for some time in silent expectation of Daly's commencement. But that gentleman was walking up and down the room with his hands behind his back, occasionally stopping to look out upon the lawn.

"Very well, begin--'My dear Lord Netherby,' or 'My dear Lord,'--it does n't signify which, though I suppose he would be of another mind, and find a whole world of difference between the two. Have you that?--very well. Then go on to mention, in such terms as you like yourself, the sudden change of fortune that has befallen your family,--briefly, but decisively."

"Dictate it, I'll follow you," said Lionel, somewhat put out by this mode of composition.

"Oh! it doesn't matter exactly what the words are,--say, that a d----d scoundrel, Gleeson--Honest Tom we always called him--has cut and run with something like a hundred thousand pounds, after forging and falsifying every signature to our leases for the last ten or fifteen years; we are, in consequence, ruined--obliged to leave the abbey, take to a cottage--a devilish poor one, too."

"Don't go so fast--'we are in consequence--'"

"Utterly smashed--broken up--no home, and devilish little to live upon,--my mother's jointure being barely sufficient for herself and Helen. I want, therefore, to remind you--your Lords.h.i.+p, that is--to remind your Lords.h.i.+p of the kind pledge which you so lately made us, at a time when we little antic.i.p.ated the early necessity we should have to recall it. My father, some forty-five or six years back, raised the Darcy Light Horse, equipped, armed, and mounted six hundred men, at his own expense. This regiment, of which he took the head, did good service in the Low Countries, and although distinguished in many actions, he received nothing but thanks,--happily not wanting more, if so much.

Times are changed now with him, and it would be a seasonable act of kindness and a suitable reward to an old officer--highly esteemed as he is and has been through life--to make up for past neglect by some appointment--the service has many such--Confound them! the pension-list shows what fellows there are--'governors and deputy-governors,' 'acting adjutants' of this, and 'deputy a.s.sistant commissaries' of that."

"I 'm not to write that, I suppose?"

"No, you needn't,--it would do no harm, though, to give them a hint on the subject; but never mind it now. 'As for myself, I 'll leave the Guards, and take service in the Line. I am only anxious for a regiment on a foreign station, and if in India, so much the better.' Is that down? Well--eh! that will do, I think. You may just say, that the matter ought to be arranged without any communication with your father, inasmuch as, from motives of delicacy, he might feel bound to decline what was tendered as an offer, though he would hold himself pledged to accept what was called by the name of duty. Yes, Lionel, that's the way to put the case; active service, by all means active service,--no guard-mounting at Windsor or Carlton House; no Hounslow Heath engagements."

Lionel followed, as well as he was able, the suggestions, to which sundry short interjections and broken "hems!" and "ha's!" gave no small confusion, and at last finished a letter, which, if it conveyed some part of the intention, was even a stronger exponent of the character, of him who dictated it.

"Shall I read it over to you?"

"Heaven forbid! If you did, I 'd alter every word of it. I never reconsidered a note that I did not change my mind about it, and I don't believe I ever counted a sum of money over more than once without making the tot vary each time. Send it off as it is--' Yours truly, Lionel Darcy.'"

It was about ten days after the events we have just related that Bagenal Daly sat in consultation with Darcy's lawyer in the back parlor of the Knight's Dublin residence. Lionel, who had been in conclave with them for several hours, had just left the room, and they now remained in thoughtful silence, pondering over their late discussion.

"That young man," said Bicknell, at length, "is very far from being deficient in ability, but he is wayward and reckless as the rest of the family; he seems to have signed his name everywhere they told him, and to anything. Here are leases forever at nominal rents--no fines in renewal--rights of fishery disposed of--oak timber--marble quarries--property of every kind--made away with. Never was there such wasteful, ruinous expenditure coupled with peculation and actual robbery at the same time."