Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 64

"Mr. James," said the princ.i.p.al clerk, turning to one of the others, "be so good to hand me the letters we have of Mr. Ormond. As we have never seen the gentleman sign his name, sir, it is necessary that we should be more particular in comparing."

"Oh! sir, no doubt--compare as much as you please--no doubt people cannot be too exact and deliberate in doing business."

"It certainly is his signature," said the clerk.

"I witnessed the paper," said Patrickson.

"Sir, I don't dispute it," replied the clerk; "but you cannot blame us for being cautious when such a _very_ large sum is in question, and when we have no letter of advice from the gentleman."

"But I tell you I come straight from Mr. Ormond; I saw him last Tuesday at Paris--"

"And you see him now, sir," said Ormond, advancing.

Patrickson's countenance changed beyond all power of control.

"Mr. Ormond!--I thought you were at Paris."

"Mr. Patrickson!--I thought you were at Havre de Grace--what brought you here so suddenly?"

"I acted for another," hesitated Patrickson: "I therefore made no delay."

"And, thank Heaven!" said Ormond, "I have acted for myself!--but just in time!--Sir," continued he, addressing himself to the princ.i.p.al clerk, "Gentlemen, I have to return you my thanks for your caution--it has actually saved me from ruin--for I understand--"

Ormond suddenly stopped, recollecting that he might injure Sir Ulick O'Shane essentially by a premature disclosure, or by repeating a report which might be ill-founded.

He turned again to speak to Patrickson, but Patrickson had disappeared.

Then continuing to address himself to the clerks. "Gentlemen," said Ormond, speaking carefully, "have you heard any thing of or from Sir Ulick O'Shane lately, except what you may have heard from this Mr.

Patrickson?"

"Not _from_ but _of_ Sir Ulick O'Shane we heard from our Dublin correspondent--in due course we have heard," replied the head clerk.

"Too true, I am afraid, sir, that his bank had come to paying in sixpences on Sat.u.r.day."

The second clerk seeing great concern in Ormond's countenance, added, "But Sunday, you know, is in their favour, sir; and Monday and Tuesday are holidays: so they may stand the run, and recover yet."

With the help of this gentleman's thirty thousand, they might have recovered, perhaps--but Mr. Ormond would scarcely have recovered it.

As to the ten thousand pounds in the Three per Cents., of which Sir Ulick had obtained possession a month ago, that was irrecoverable, _if_ his bank should break--"_If_."--The clerks all spoke with due caution; but their opinion was sufficiently plain. They were honestly indignant against the guardian who had thus attempted to ruin his ward.

Though almost stunned and breathless with the sense of the danger he had so narrowly escaped, yet Ormond's instinct of generosity, if we may use the expression, and his grat.i.tude for early kindness, operated; he _would_ not believe that Sir Ulick had been guilty of a deliberate desire to injure him. At all events, he determined that, instead of returning to France, as he had intended, he would go immediately to Ireland, and try if it were possible to a.s.sist Sir Ulick, without materially injuring himself.

Having ordered horses, he made inquiry wherever he thought he might obtain information with respect to the Annalys. All that he could learn was, that they were at some sea-bathing place in the south of England, and that Miss Annaly was still unmarried. A ray of hope darted into the mind of our hero--and he began his journey to Ireland with feelings which every good and generous mind will know how to appreciate.

He had escaped at Paris from a temptation which it was scarcely possible to resist. He had by decision and activity preserved his fortune from ruin--he had under his protection an humble friend, whom he had saved from banishment and disgrace, and whom he hoped to restore to his wretched wife and family. Forgetful of the designs that had been meditated against him by his guardian, to whose necessities he attributed his late conduct, he hastened to his immediate a.s.sistance; determined to do every thing in his power to save Sir Ulick from ruin, _if_ his difficulties arose from misfortune, and not from criminality: if, on the contrary, he should find that Sir Ulick was fraudulently a bankrupt, he determined to quit Ireland immediately, and to resume his scheme of foreign travel.

The system of posting had at this time been carried to the highest perfection in England. It was the amus.e.m.e.nt and the fas.h.i.+on of the time, to squander large sums in hurrying from place to place, without any immediate motive for arriving at the end of a journey, but that of having the satisfaction of boasting in what a short time it had been performed; or, as it is expressed in one of our comedies, "to enter London like a meteor, with a prodigious tail of dust."

Moriarty Carroll, who was perched upon the box with Ormond's servant, made excellent observations wherever he went. His English companion could not comprehend how a man of common sense could be ignorant of various things, which excited the wonder and curiosity of Moriarty.

Afterwards, however, when they travelled in Ireland, Moriarty had as much reason to be surprised at the impression which Irish manners and customs made upon his companion. After a rapid journey to Holyhead, our hero found to his mortification that the packet had sailed with a fair wind about half an hour before his arrival.

Notwithstanding his impatience, he learned that it was impossible to overtake the vessel in a boat, and that he must wait for the sailing of the next day's packet.

Fortunately, however, the Lord-Lieutenant's secretary arrived from London at Holyhead time enough for the tide; and as he had an order from the post-office for a packet to sail whenever he should require it, the intelligent landlord of the inn suggested to Ormond that he might probably obtain permission from the secretary to have a berth in this packet.

Ormond's manner and address were such as to obtain from the good-natured secretary the permission he required; and, in a short time, he found himself out of sight of the coast of Wales. During the beginning of their voyage the motion of the vessel was so steady, and the weather so fine, that every body remained on deck; but on the wind s.h.i.+fting and becoming more violent, the landsmen soon retired below decks, and poor Moriarty and his English companion slunk down into the steerage, submitting to their fate. Ormond was never sea-sick; he walked the deck, and enjoyed the admirable manoeuvring of the vessel. Two or three naval officers, and some other pa.s.sengers, who were used to the sea, and who had quietly gone to bed during the beginning of the voyage, now came from below, to avoid the miseries of the cabin. As one of these gentlemen walked backwards and forwards upon deck, he eyed our hero from time to time with looks of anxious curiosity--Ormond perceiving this, addressed the stranger, and inquired from him whether he had mistaken his looks, or whether he had any wish to speak to him. "Sir," said the stranger, "I do think that I have seen you before, and I believe that I am under considerable obligations to you--I was supercargo to that vessel that was wrecked on the coast of Ireland, when you and your young friend exerted yourselves to save the vessel from plunder. After the s.h.i.+pwreck, the moment I found myself on land, I hastened to the neighbouring town to obtain protection and a.s.sistance. In the mean time, your exertions had saved a great deal of our property, which was lodged in safety in the neighbourhood. I had procured a horse in the town to which I had gone, and had ridden back to the sh.o.r.e with the utmost expedition. Along with the vessel which had been s.h.i.+pwrecked there had sailed another American sloop. We were both bound from New York to Bourdeaux. In the morning after the s.h.i.+pwreck, our consort hove in sight of the wreck, and sent a boat on sh.o.r.e, to inquire what had become of the crew, and of the cargo, but they found not a human creature on the sh.o.r.e, except myself. The plunderers had escaped to their hiding-places, and all the rest of the inhabitants had accompanied the poor young gentleman, who had fallen a sacrifice to his exertions in our favour.

"It was of the utmost consequence to my employers, that I should arrive as soon as possible at Bourdeaux, to give an account of what had happened. I therefore, without hesitation, abandoned my horse, with its bridle and saddle, and I got on board the American vessel without delay.

In my hurry I forgot my great coat on the sh.o.r.e, a loss which proved extremely inconvenient to me--as there were papers in the pockets which might be necessary to produce before my employers.

"I arrived safely at Bourdeaux, settled with my princ.i.p.als to their satisfaction, and I am now on my way to Ireland, to reclaim such part of my property, and that of my employers, as was saved from the savages who pillaged us in our distress."--This detail, which was given with great simplicity and precision, excited considerable interest among the persons upon the deck of the packet. Moriarty, who was pretty well recovered from his sickness, was now summoned upon deck. Ormond confronted him with the American supercargo, but neither of them had the least recollection of each other. "And yet," said Ormond to the American, "though you do not know this man, he is at this moment under sentence of transportation for having robbed you, and he very narrowly escaped being hanged for your murder. A fate from which he was saved by the patience and sagacity of the judge who tried him."

Moriarty's surprise was expressed with such strange contortions of delight, and with a tone, and in a phraseology, so peculiarly his own, as to astonish and entertain the spectators. Among these was the Irish secretary, who, without any application being made to him, promised Moriarty to procure for him a free pardon.

On Ormond's landing in Dublin, the first news he heard, and it was repeated a hundred times in a quarter of an hour, was that "Sir Ulick O'Shane was bankrupt--that his bank shut up yesterday." It was a public calamity, a source of private distress, that reached lower and farther than any bankruptcy had ever done in Ireland. Ormond heard of it from every tongue, it was written in every face--in every house it was the subject of lamentation, of invective. In every street, poor men, with ragged notes in their hands, were stopping to pore over the names at the back of the notes, or hurrying to and fro, looking up at the shop-windows for "_half price given here for O'Shane's notes_." Groups of people, of all ranks, gathered--stopped--dispersed, talking of Sir Ulick O'Shane's bankruptcy--their hopes--their fears--their losses--their ruin--their despair--their rage. Some said it was all owing to Sir Ulick's shameful extravagance: "His house in Dublin, fit for a duke!--Castle Hermitage full of company to the last week--b.a.l.l.s--dinners--the most expensive luxuries--scandalous!"

Others accused Sir Ulick's absurd speculations. Many p.r.o.nounced the bankruptcy to be fraudulent, and a.s.serted that an estate had been made over to Marcus, who would live in affluence on the ruin of the creditors.

At Sir Ulick's house in town every window-shutter was closed. Ormond rang and knocked in vain--not that he wished to see Sir Ulick--no, he would not have intruded on his misery for the world; but Ormond longed to inquire from the servants how things were with him. No servant could be seen. Ormond went to Sir Ulick's bank. Such crowds of people filled the street that it was with the utmost difficulty and after a great working of elbows, that in an hour or two he made his way to one of the barred windows. There was a place where notes were handed in and _accepted_, as they called it, by the clerks, who thus for the hour soothed and pacified the sufferers, with the hopes that this _acceptance_ would be good, and would _stand in stead_ at some future day. They were told that when things should come to a settlement, all would be paid. There was property enough to satisfy the creditors, when the _commissioners_ should look into it. Sir Ulick would pay all honourably--as far as possible--fifteen s.h.i.+llings in the pound, or certainly ten s.h.i.+llings--the _accepted_ notes would pa.s.s for that any where. The crowd pressed closer and closer, arms crossing over each other to get notes in at the window, the clerks' heads appearing and disappearing. It was said they were laughing while they thus deluded the people.

All the intelligence that Ormond, after being nearly suffocated, could obtain from any of the clerks, was, that Sir Ulick was in the country.

"They believed at Castle Hermitage--could not be certain--had no letters for him to-day--he was ill when they heard last--so ill he could do no business--confined to his bed."

The people in the street hearing these answers replied, "Confined in his bed, is he?--In the jail, it should be, as many will be along of him.

Ill, is he, Sir Ulick?--Sham sickness, may be--all his life a _sham_."

All these and innumerable other taunts and imprecations, with which the poor people vented their rage, Ormond heard as he made his way out of the crowd.

Of all who had suffered, he who had probably lost the most, and who certainly had been on the brink of losing the greatest part of what he possessed, was the only individual who uttered no reproach.

He was impatient to get down to Castle Hermitage, and if he found that Sir Ulick had acted fairly, to be some comfort to him, to be with him at least when deserted by all the rest of the world.

At all the inns upon the road, as he went from Dublin to Castle Hermitage, even at the villages where he stopped to water the horses, every creature, down to the hostlers, were talking of the bankruptcy--and abusing Sir Ulick O'Shane and his son. The curses that were deep, not loud, were the worst--and the faces of distress worse than all. Gathering round his carriage, wherever it stopped, the people questioned him and his servants about the news, and then turned away, saying they were ruined. The men stood in unutterable despair. The women crying, loudly bewailed "their husbands, their sons, that must waste in the jail or fly the country; for what should they do for the rents that had been made up in Sir Ulick's notes, and _no good_ now?"

Ormond felt the more on hearing these complaints, from his sense of the absolute impossibility of relieving the universal distress.

He pursued his melancholy journey, and took Moriarty into the carriage with him, that he might not be recognized on the road.

When he came within sight of Castle Hermitage, he stopped at the top of the hill at a cottage, where many a time in his boyish days he had rested with Sir Ulick out hunting. The mistress of the house, now an old woman, came to the door.

"Master Harry dear!" cried she, when she saw who it was. But the sudden flash of joy in her old face was over in an instant.

"But did you hear it?" cried she, "and the great change it caused him--poor Sir Ulick O'Shane? I went up with eggs on purpose to see him, but could only hear--he was in his bed--wasting with trouble--n.o.body knows any thing more--all is kept hush and close. Mr. Marcus took off all he could rap, and ran, even to--"

"Well, well, I don't want to hear of Marcus--can you tell me whether Dr.

Cambray is come home?"

"Not expected to come till Monday."

"Are you sure?"