This Edition is limited to one thousand and twenty-five copies THE WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH CELT AND SAXON THE WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH VOLUME XXXV LONDON co;nstable and company ltd 10 ORANGE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE 1911 LliJIUW. mnvEneiTY oi" 1 VI..: i».»MA p SANTA BAUBAllA C 1- CELT AND SAXON ( Unfinished') 35- CONTENTS I. Wherein an Excursion is made in a Celtic Mind, II. Mr. Adister, . III. Caroline, IV. The Princess, V. At the Piano, chiefly without Music, VI. A Consultation : with Opinions upon Welshwomen and the Cambrian Race, VII. The Miniature, .... VIII. Captain Con and Mrs. Adister O'Donnell, IX. The Captain's Cabin, X. The Brothers, .... XI. Introducing a New Character, XII. Miss Mattock, .... ix Page 1 8 14 27 34 40 54 68 84 98 105 116 CONTENTS Page XIII. The Dinner-Party, . . .124 XIV. OfRockney, . . . .139 XV. The Mattock Family, . . .159 XVI. Of the great Mr. Bull and the Celtic and Saxon view of him : and some- thing of Richard Rockney, . . 182 XVII. Crossing the Rubicon, . . . 204 XVIII. Captain Con's Letter, . . .221 XIX. Mars Convalescent, . . .233 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER I Wherein an Excursion is made in a Celtic Mind A young Irish gentleman of the numerous clan O'Donnells, and a Patrick, hardly a distinction of him until we know him, had bound himself, by purchase of a railway ticket, to travel direct to the borders of North Wales, on a visit to a notable landowner of those marches, the Squire Adister, whose family-seat was where the hills begin to lift and spy into the heart of black mountains. Examining his ticket with an apparent curiosity, the son of a greener island debated whether it would not be better for him to follow his inclinations, now that he had gone so far as to pay for the journej% and stay. But his inclinations were also subject to question, upon his considering that he had expended pounds English for the privilege of making the journey in this very train. He asked himself earnestly what was the nature of the power which forced him to do it — a bad genius or a good : and it seemed to him a sort of answer, inasmuch as it silenced the contending parties, that he had been the victim of an impetus. True ; still his present position 35— A 1 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER I Wherein an Excursion is made in a Celtic Mind involved a certain outlay of money simply, not at all his bondage to the instrument it had procured for him, and that was true ; nevertheless, to buy a ticket to shy it away is an incident so uncommon, that if we can but pause to dwell on the singularity of the act, we are unlikely to abjure our fellowship with them who would not be guilty of it ; and therefore, by the aid of his reflections and a remainder of the impetus, Mr. Patrick O'Donnell stepped into a carriage of the train like any ordinary English traveller, between whom and his destination there is an agreement to meet if they can. It is an experience of hesitating minds, be they Saxon or others, that when we have submitted our persons to the charge of public companies, immediately, as if the renouncing of our independence into their hands had given us a taste of a will of our own, we are eager for the performance of their contract to do what we are only half inclined to ; the train cannot go fast enough to please us, though we could excuse it for breaking down; stoppages at stations are imper- tinences, and the delivery of us at last on the platform is an astonishment, for it is not we who have done it — we have not even desired it. To be imperfectly in accord with the velocity precipitating us upon a certain point, is to be going without our heads, which hav^e so much the habit of supposing it must be whither we intend, when we go in a determined manner, that a doubt of it distracts the understanding — decapitates us ; suddenly to alight, moreover, and find ourselves dropped at the heels of flying Time, like an unconsidered bundle, is anything but a recon- struction of the edifice. The natural revelry of the 2 CELT AND SAXON blood in speed suffers a violent shock, not to speak of chapter our notion of being left behind, quite isolated and ^. ? <-' ' ^ wnerem an unsound. Or, if you insist, the condition shall be Excursion is said to belong exclusively to Celtic nature, seeing that ce^uiVMind it had been drawn directly from a scion of one of those tribes. Young Patrick jumped from the train as headless as good St. Denis. He was a juvenile thinker, and to discover himself here, where he both wished and wished not to be, now deeming the negative sternly in the ascendant, flicked his imagination with awe of the influence of the railway service upon the destinies of man. Settling a mental debate about a backward flight, he drove across the land so foreign to his eyes and affections, and breasted a strong tide of wishes that it were in a contrary direction. He would rather have looked upon the desert under a sand-storm, or upon a London suburb : yet he looked thirstingly. Each variation of landscape of the curv^ed highway offered him in a moment decisive features : he fitted them to a story he knew : the whole circle was animated by a couple of pale mounted figures beneath no happy light. For this was the air once breathed by Adiante Adister, his elder brother Philip's love and lost love : here she had been to Philip flame along the hill-ridges, his rose -world in the dust-world, the saintly in his earthly. And how had she rewarded him for that reverential love of her? She had for- borne to kill him. The bitter sylph of the mountain lures men to climb till she winds them in vapour and leaves them groping, innocent of the red crags below. The delicate thing had not picked his bones : Patrick admitted it; he had seen his brother hale and stout 3 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER I Wherein an Excursion is made in a Celtic Mind not long back. But oh ! she was merciless, she was a witch. If ever queen-witch was, she was the crowned one! For a personal proof, now : he had her all round him in a strange district though he had never cast eye on her. Yonder bare hill she came racing up with a plume in the wind : she was over the long brown moor, look where he would : and vividly was she beside the hurrying beck where it made edges and chattered white. He had not seen, he could not imagine her face : angelic dashed with demon beauty, was his idea of the woman, and there is little of a portrait in that; but he was of a world where the elemental is more individual than the concrete, and unconceived of sight she was a recognised presence for the green-island brain of a youth whose manner of hating was to conjure her spirit from the air and let fly his own in pursuit of her. It has to be stated that the object of the youngster's expedition to Earlsfont was perfectly simple in his mind, however much it went against his nature to perform it. He came for the purpose of obtaining Miss Adister's Continental address; to gather what he could of her from her relatives, and then forthwith to proceed in search of her, that he might plead with her on behalf of his brother Philip, after a four years' division of the lovers. Could anything be simpler? He had familiarised himself with the thought of his advocacy during those four years. His reluctance to come would have been accountable to the Adisters by a sentiment of shame at his family's dealings with theirs : in fact, a military captain of the O'Donnells had in old days played the adventurer and charmed a 4 CELT AND SAXON maid of a certain age into yielding her hand to him ; chapter and the lady was the squire of Earlsfont's only sister: wherein an she possessed funded property. Shortly after the Excursion is union, as one that has achieved the goal of enterprise, ceiucMind the gallant officer retired from the service : nor did north-western England put much to his credit the declaration of his wife's pronouncing him to be the best of husbands. She naturally said it of him in eulogy; his own relatives accepted it in some con- tempt, mixed with a relish of his hospitality : his wife's were constant in citing his gain by the marriage. Could he possibly have been less than that? they exclaimed. An excellent husband, who might easily have been less than that, he was the most devoted of cousins, and the liberal expenditure of his native eloquence for the furtherance of Philip's love-suit was the principal cause of the misfortune, if misfortune it could subsequently be called to lose an Adiante. The Adister family were not gifted to read into the heart of a young man of a fanciful turn. Patrick had not a thought of shame devolving on him from a kins- man that had shot at a mark and hit it. Who sees the shame of taking an apple from a garden of the Hes- perides? And as England cultivates those golden, if sometimes wrinkled, fruits, it would have seemed to him, in thinking about it, an entirely lucky thing for the finder; while a question of blood would have fired his veins to rival heat of self-assertion, very loftily towering; there were Kings in Ireland ; cry for one of them in Uladh and you will hear his name, and he has descendants yet ! But the j'outh was not disposed unnecessarily to blazon his princeliness. He kept it in modest reserve, as common gentlemen keep their 5 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER I Wherein an Excursion is made in a Celtic Mind physical strength. His reluctance to look on Earls- font sprang from the same source as unacknowledged craving to see the place, which had precipitated him thus far upon his road: he had a horror of scenes where a faithless girl had betrayed her lover. Love was his visionary temple, and his idea of love was the solitary light in it, painfully susceptible to cold-air currents from the stories of love abroad over the world. Faithlessness he conceived to be obnoxious to nature; it stained the earth and was excommuni- cated ; there could be no pardon of the crime, barely any for repentance. He conceived it in the feminine ; for men are not those holy creatures whose conduct strikes on the soul with direct edge ; a faithless man is but a general villain or funny monster, a subject rejected of poets, taking no hue in the flat chronicle of history : but a faithless woman, how shall we speak of her ! Women, sacredly endowed with beauty and the wonderful vibrating note about the very mention of them, are criminal to hideousness when they betray. Cry, False ! on them, and there is an instant echo of bleeding males in many circles, like the poor quavering flute-howl of transformed beasts, which at some remembering touch bewail their higher state. Those women are sovereignly attractive, too, loathsomely. Therein you may detect the fiend. Our moralist had for some time been glancing at a broad, handsome old country mansion on the top of a wooded hill backed by a swarm of mountain heads all purple-dark under clouds flying thick to shallow, as from a brush of sepia. The dim silver of half-lighted lake-water shot along below the terrace. He knew the kind of sky, having oftener seen that than any 6 CELT AND SAXON other, and he knew the house before it was named to chapter him and he had flung a discolouring thought across it. ,,,. ^ o o d \\ herein an He contemplated it placably and studiously, perhaps Excursion is because the shower-folding armies of the fields above ee^itiVmnd likened its shadowed stillness to that of his Irish home. There had this woman lived ! At the name of Earlsfont she became this witch, snake, deception. Earlsfont was the title and summary of her black story: the reverberation of the word shook up all the chapters to pour out their poison. CHAPTER II Mr. Adister Mr. Patrick O'Donnell drove up to the gates of Earls- font notwithstanding these emotions, upon which light matter it is the habit of men of his blood too much to brood ; though it is for our better future to have a capacity for them, and the insensible race is the oxenish. But if he did so when alone, the second man residing in the Celt put that fellow by and at once assumed the social character on his being requested to follow his card into Mr. Adister's librarJ^ He took his im- pression of the hall that had heard her voice, the stairs she had descended, the door she had passed through, and the globes she had perchance laid hand on, and the old mappemonde, and the severely-shining orderly regiment of books breathing of her whether she had opened them or not, as he bowed to his host, and in reply to, * So, sir ! I am glad to see you,' said swim- mingly that Earlsfont was the first house he had visited in this country : and the scenery reminded him of his part of Ireland : and on landing at Holyhead he had gone off straight to the metropolis by appointment to meet his brother Philip, just returned from Canada a full captain, who heartily despatched his compli- 8 CELT AND SAXON ments and respects, and hoped to hear of perfect chapter health in this quarter of the world. And Captain Con j^j^, Xdister the same, and he was very flourishing. Patrick's opening speech concluded on the sound of a short laugh coming from Mr. Adister. It struck the young Irishman's ear as injurious and scornful in relation to Captain Con ; but the remark ensuing calmed him : *He has no children.' 'No, sir; Captain Con wasn't born to increase the number of our clan,' Patrick rejoined; and thought: By heaven! I get a likeness of her out of you, with a dash of the mother mayhap somewhere. This was his Puck-manner of pulling a girdle round about from what was foremost in his head to the secret of his host's quiet observation ; for, guessing that such features as he beheld would be slumped on a handsome family, he was led by the splendid severity of their lines to perceive an illimitable pride in the man likely to punish him in his offspring, who would inherit that as well; so, as is the way with the livelier races, whether they seize first or second the matter or the spirit of what they hear, the vivid indulgence of his own ideas helped him to catch the right meaning by the tail, and he was enlightened upon a domestic unhappiness, although Mr. Adister had not spoken miserably. The 'dash of the mother' was thrown in to make Adiante softer, and leave a loophole for her relenting. The master of Earlsfont stood for a promise of beauty in his issue, requiring to be softened at the mouth and along the brows, even in men. He was tall, and had clear Greek outlines : the lips were locked metal, thin as edges of steel, and his eyes, 9 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER when he directed them on the person he addressed or Mr Adister *^® pcrson Speaking, were as little varied by motion of the lids as eyeballs of a stone bust. If they ex- pressed more, because they were not sculptured eyes, it was the expression of his high and frigid nature rather than any of the diversities pertaining to senti- ment and shades of meaning. Patrick watched him for signs of that unknown Adiante. 'You have had the bequest of an estate,' Mr. Adister said, to compliment him by touching on his affairs. 'A small one; not a quarter of a county,' said Patrick. 'Productive, sir? ' ' 'Tis a tramp of discovery, sir, to where bog ends and cultivation begins.' 'Bequeathed to you exclusively over the head of your elder brother, I understand.' Patrick nodded assent. 'But my purse is Philip's, and my house, and my horses.' 'Not bequeathed by a member of your family? ' 'By a distant cousin, chancing to have been one of my godmothers.' 'Women do these things,' Mr. Adister said, not in perfect approbation of their doings. 'And I think too, it might have gone to the elder,' Patrick replied to his tone. 'It is not your intention to be an idle gentleman?' 'No, nor a vagrant Irishman, sir.' ' You propose to sit down over there ? ' 'When I've more brains to be of service to them and the land, I do.' Mr. Adister pulled the arm of his chair. 'The pro- 10 CELT AND SAXON fessions are crammed. An Irish gentleman owning land might do worse. I am in favour of some degree of military training for all gentlemen. You hunt? ' Patrick's look was, * Give me a chance ' ; and Mr. Adister continued: 'Good runs are to be had here; you shall try them. You are something of a shot, I suppose. We hear of gentlemen now who neither hunt nor shoot. You fence?' 'That's to say, I've had lessons in the art.' *I am not aware that there is now an art of fencing taught in Ireland.' 'Nor am I,' said Patrick; 'though there's no know- ing what goes on in the cabins.' Mr. Adister appeared to acquiesce. Observations of sly import went by him like the whispering wind. 'Your priests should know,' he said. To this Patrick thought it well not to reply. After a pause between them, he referred to the fencing. ' I was taught by a Parisian master of the art, sir.' 'You have been to Paris?' 'I was educated in Paris.' 'How? Ah!' Mr. Adister corrected himself in the higher notes of recollection. ' I think I have heard something of a Jesuit seminary.' 'The Fathers did me the service to knock all I know into me, and call it education, by courtesy,' said Patrick, basking in the unobscured frown of his host. 'Then you are accustomed to speak French? ' The interrogation was put to extract some balm from the circumstance. Patrick tried his art of fence with the absurdity by saying: 'All but like a native.' ' These Jesuits taught you the use of the foils ? ' 11 CHAPTER II Mr. Adister CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER * They allowed me the privilege of learning, sir.' ., " . , After meditation, Mr. Adister said : ' You don't Mr. Adister dance?' He said it speculating on the kind of gentle- man produced in Paris by the disciples of Loyola. 'Pardon me, sir, you hit on another of my accom- plishments.' ' These Jesuits encourage dancing? ' 'The square dance — short of the embracing: the valse is under interdict.' Mr. Adister peered into his brows profoundly for a glimpse of the devilry in that exclusion of the valse. What object had those people in encouraging the young fellow to be a perfect fencer and dancer, so that he should be of the school of the polite world, and yet subservient to them? * Thanks to the Jesuits, then, you are almost a Parisian,' he remarked; provoking the retort: 'Thanks to them, I've stored a little, and Paris is to me as pure a place as four whitewashed walls ' : Patrick added : ' without a shadow of a monk on them.' Perhaps it was thrown in for the comfort of mundane ears afflicted sorelj'', and no point of principle pertained to the slur on a monk. Mr. Adister could have exclaimed. That shadow of the monk! had he been in an exclamatory mood. He said: 'They have not made a monk of you, then.' Patrick was minded to explain how that the Jesuits are a religious order exercising worldly weapons. The lack of precise words admonished him of the virtue of silence, and he retreated with a quiet negative : ' They have not.' 'Then, you are no Jesuit?' he was asked. Thinking it scarcely required a response, he shrugged. 12 CELT AND SAXON 'You would not change your religion, sir?' said Mr. chapter Adister in seeming anger. „, l\.^^^^ Patrick thought he would have to rise : he half fancied himself summoned to change his religion or depart from the house. 'Not I,' said he. * Not for the title of Prince ? ' he was further pressed, and he replied : 'I don't happen to have an ambition for the title of Prince.' ' Or any title ! ' interjected Mr. Adister, < or whatever the devil can offer ! — or,' he spoke more pointedly, 'for what fools call a brilliant marriage?' 'My religion?' Patrick now treated the question seriously and raised his head: 'I'd not suffer myself to be asked twice.' The sceptical northern-blue eyes of his host dwelt on him with their full repellent stare. The young Catholic gentleman expected he might hear a frenetic zealot roar out : Be off! He was not immediately reassured by the words : 'Dead or alive, then, you have a father! ' The spectacle of a state of excitement without a show of feeling was novel to Patrick. He began to see that he was not implicated in a wrath that referred to some great offender, and Mr. Adister soon confirmed his view by saying : ' You are no disgrace to j'our begetting, sir ! ' With that he quitted his chair, and hospitably proposed to conduct his guest over the house and grounds. 13 CHAPTER III Caroline Men of the Adister family having taken to themselves brides of a very dusty pedigree from the Principality, there were curious rough heirlooms to be seen about the house, shields on the armoury walls and hunting-horns, and drinking-horns, and spears, and chain-belts bearing clasps of heads of beasts ; old gold ornaments, torques, blue-stone necklaces, under glass-cases, were in the library ; huge rings that must have given the wearers fearful fists ; a shirt of coarse linen with a pale brown spot on the breast, like a fallen beech-leaf; and many sealed parchment-skins, very precious, for an inspection of which, as Patrick was bidden to understand. History humbly knocked at the Earlsfont hall-doors ; and the proud muse made her transcripts of them kneeling. He would have been affected by these wonders had any relic of Adiante appeased his thirst. Or had there been one mention of her, it would have disengaged him from the incessant speculations regarding the daughter of the house, of whom not a word was uttered. No portrait of her was shown. Why was she absent from her home so long? where was she? How could her name be started? And was it she who was the sinner in her father's mind ? But the idolatrous love between Adiante 14 CELT AND SAXON and her father was once a legend: they could not have chapter been cut asunder. She had offered up her love of Philip ca/oiin as a sacrifice to it: Patrick recollected that, and now with a softer gloom on his brooding he released her from the burden of his grand charge of unfaithfulness to the truest of lovers, by acknowledging that he was in the presence of the sole rival of his brother. Glorious girl that she was, her betrayal of Philip had nothing of a woman's base caprice to make it infamous: she had sacrificed him to her reading of duty; and that was duty to her father ; and the point of duty was in this instance rather a sacred one. He heard v^oices murmur that she might be praised. He remonstrated with them, assuring them, as one who knew, that a woman's first duty is her duty to her lover; her parents are her second thought. Her lover, in the consideration of a real soul among the shifty creatures, is her husband; and have we not the word of heaven directing her to submit herself to him who is her husband before all others ? That peerless Adiante had grievously erred in the upper sphere where she received her condemnation, but such a sphere is ladder and ladder and silver ladder high above your hair-splitting pates, you children of earth, and it is not for you to act on the verdict in decrying her: rather 'tis for you to raise hymns of worship to a saint ! Thus did the ingenious Patrick change his ground and gain his argument with the celerity of one who wins a game by playing it without an adversarj\ Mr. Adister had sprung a new sense in him on the subject of the renunciation of the religion. No thought of a possible apostasy had ever occurred to the youth, and as he was aware that the difference of their faith had been the 15 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER main cause of the division of Adiante and Philip, he could Caroline ^* least consent to think well of her down here, that is, on our flat surface of earth. Up there, among the im- mortals, he was compelled to shake his head at her still, and more than sadly in certain moods of exaltation, reprovingly; though she interested him beyond all her sisterhood above, it had to be confessed. They traversed a banqueting-hall hung with portraits, to two or three of which the master of Earlsfont carelessly pointed, for his guest to be interested in them or not as he mightplease. A reception-hall flung folding-doors on a grand drawing-room, where the fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody, and made a show of keeping the house alive. A modern steel cuirass, helmet and plume at a corner of the armoury reminded Mr. Adister to say that he had worn the uniform in his day. He cast an odd look at the old shell con- taining him when he was a brilliant youth. Patrick was marched on to Colonel Arthur's rooms, and to Captain David's, the sailor. Their father talked of his two sons. They appeared to satisfy him. If that was the case, they could hardly have thrown off their religion. Already Patrick had a dread of naming the daughter. An idea struck him that she might be the person who had been guilty of it over there on the Continent. What if she had done it, upon a review of her treatment of her lover, and gone into a convent to wait for Philip to come and claim her? — saying, 'Philip, I've put the knife to my father's love of me; love me double'; and so she just half swoons, enough to show how the dear angel looks in her sleep : a trick of kindness these heavenly women have, that we heathen may get a peep of their secret rose-enfolded selves; and dream's 16 CELT AND SAXON no word, nor drunken, for the blessed mischief it chapter works with us. ^ "f. Carohne Supposing it so, it accounted for everything : for her absence, and her father's abstention from a mention of her, and the pretty good sort of welcome Patrick had received : for as yef it was unknown that she did it all for an O'Donnell. These being his reflections, he at once accepted a view of her that so agreeably quieted his perplexity, and he leapt out of his tangle into the happy open spaces where the romantic things of life are as natural as the sun that rises and sets. There you imagine what you will ; you live what you imagine. An Adiante meets her lover : another Adiante, the phantom likeness of her, similar to the finger-tips, hovers to a meeting with some one whose heart shakes your manful frame at but a thought of it. But this other Adiante is altogether a secondary con- ception, barely descried, and chased by you that she may interpret the mystical nature of the happiness of those two, close-linked to eternity, in advance. You would learn it, if she would expound it; you are ready to learn it, for the sake of knowledge ; and if you link yourself to her and do as those two are doing, it is chiefly in a spirit of imitation, in sympathy with the darting couple ahead. . . . Meanwhile he conversed, and seemed, to a gentle- man unaware of the vaporous activities of his brain, a young fellow of a certain practical sense. * We have not much to teach you in horseflesh,' Mr. Adister said, quitting the stables to proceed to the gardens. * We must look alive to keep up our breed, sir,' said Patrick. 'We're breeding too fine: and soon we shan't 35— B 17 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER III Caroline be able to horse our troopers. I call that the land for horses where the cavalry 's well mounted on a native breed.' ' You have your brother's notions of cavalry, have you!' < I leave it to Philip to boast what cavalry can do on the field. He knows : but he knows that troopers must be mounted: and we 're fineing more and more from bone: — with the sales to foreigners! and the only chance of their not beating us is that they '11 be so good as follow our bad example. Prussia 's well horsed, and for the work it 's intended to do, the Austrian light cavalry's a model. So I 'm told. I'll see for myself. Then we sit our horses too heavy. The Saxon trooper runs headlong to flesh. 'Tis the beer that fattens and swells him. Properly to speak, we've no light cavalry. The French are studying it, and when they take to studying, they come to the fore. I'll pay a visit to their breeding establishments. We've no studying here, and not a scrap of system that I see. All the country seems armed for bullying the facts, till the periodical panic arrives, and then it's for lying flat and roaring — and we'll drop the curtain, if you please.' 'You say we^' returned Mr. Adister. *I hear you launched at us English by the captain, your cousin, who has apparently yet to learn that we are one people.' * We 're held together and a trifle intermixed ; I fancy it's we with him and with me when we're talking of army or navy,' said Patrick. * But Captain Con 's a bit of a politician : a poor business, when there 's nothing to be done.' 18 CELT AND SAXON . * A very poor business!' Mr. Adister rejoined. chapter *Ifyou'd have the goodness to kindle his enthusiasm, ^ "^ -. ' Caroline he'd be for the first person plural, with his cap in the air,' said Patrick. *I detest enthusiasm.' 'You're not obliged to adore it to give it a wakener.' *Pray, what does that mean?' Patrick cast about to reply to the formal challenge for an explanation. He began on it as it surged up to him: 'Well, sir, the country that's got hold of us, if we're not to get loose. We don't count many millions in Europe, and there 's no shame in submitting to force majeure, if a stand was once made ; and we 're mixed up, 'tis true, well or ill; and we're stronger, both of us, united than tearing to strips : and so, there, for the past ! so long as we can set our eyes upon something to admire, instead of a bundle squatting fat on a pile of posses- sions and vowing she won't budge ; and taking kicks from a big foot across the Atlantic, and shaking bayonets out of her mob-cap for a little one's cock of the eye at her: and she's all for the fleshpots, and calls the rest of mankind fools because they're not the same : and so long as she can trim her ribands and have her hot toast and tea, with a suspicion of a dram in it, she doesn't mind how heavy she sits : nor that's not the point, nor's the land question, nor the potato crop, if only she wore the right sort of face to look at, with a bit of brightness about it, to show an idea inside striking a light from the day that 's not yet nodding at us, as the tops of big mountains do : or if she were only braced and gallant, and cried, Ready, 19 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER though I haven't much outlook ! We 'd be satisfied "^. with her for a handsome figure. I don't know whether we wouldn't be satisfied with her for politeness in her manners. We 'd like her better for a spice of devotion to a light higher up in politics and religion. But the key of the difficulty's a sparkle of enthusiasm. It's part business, and the greater part sentiment. We want a rousing in the heart of us ; or else we 'd be pleased v/ith her for sitting so as not to overlap us entirely : we 'd feel more at home, and behold her more respectfully. We 'd see the policy of an honour- able union, and be joined to you by more than a telegraphic cable. That's Captain Con, I think, and many like him.' Patrick finished his airy sketch of the Irish case in a key signifying that he might be one among the many, but unobtrusive. < Stick to horses ! ' observed Mr. Adister. It was pronounced as the termination to sheer maundering. Patrick talked on the uppermost topic for the re- mainder of their stroll. He noticed that his host occasionally allowed himself to say, 'You Irish': and he reflected that the saying, 'You English,' had been hinted as an offence. He forgot to think that he had possibly provoked this alienation in a scornfully proud spirit. The lan- guage of metaphor was to Mr. Adister fool's froth. He conceded the use of it to the Irish and the Welsh as a right that stamped them for what they were by adopting it; and they might look on a country as a ' she,' if it amused them : so long as they were not 20 CELT AND SAXON recalcitrant, they were to be tolerated, they were a chapter part of us ; doubtless the nether part, yet not the less ca "line a part for which we are bound to exercise a specially considerate care, or else we suffer, for we are sensitive there: this is justice: but the indications by fiddle- faddle verbiage of anything objectionable to the whole in the part aroused an irritability that speedily endued him with the sense of sanity opposing lunacy; when, not having a wide command of the undecorated plain speech which enjoyed his approval, he withdrew into the entrenchments of contempt. Patrick heard enough to let him understand why the lord of Earlsfont and Captain Con were not on the best of terms. Once or twice he had a twinge or suspicion of a sting from the tone of his host, though he was not political and was of a mood to pity the poor gentleman's melancholy state of solitariness, with all his children absent, his wife dead, only a niece, a young lady of twenty, to lend an air of grace and warmth to his home. She was a Caroline, and as he had never taken a liking to a Caroline, he classed her in the tribe of Carolines. To a Kathleen, an Eveleen, a Nora, or a Bessy, or an Alicia, he would have bowed more cordially on his introduction to her, for these were names with portraits and vistas beyond, that shook leaves of recollection of the happiest of life — the sweet things dreamed undesiringly in opening youth. A Caroline awakened no soft association of fancies, no mysterious heaven and earth. The others had variously tinted skies above them ; their features wooed the dream, led it on as the wooded glen leads the eye till we are deep in richness. Nor would he 21 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER III Caroline have throbbed had one of any of his favourite names appeared in the place of Caroline Adister. They had not moved his heart, they had only stirred the sources of wonder. An Eveleen had carried him farthest to imagine the splendours of an Adiante, and the announcement of the coming of an Eveleen would perchance have sped a little wild fire, to which what the world calls curiosity is frozenly akin, through his veins. Mr. Adister had spoken of his niece Caroline. A lacquey, receiving orders from his master, mentioned Miss Adister. There was but one Miss Adister for Patrick. Against reason, he was raised to anticipate the possible beholding of her, and Caroline's entrance into the drawing-room brought him to the ground. Disappointment is a poor term for the descent from an immoderate height, but the acknowledgment that we have shot up irrationally reconciles even un- philosophical youth to the necessity of the fall, though we must continue sensible of a shock. She was the Miss Adister; and how, and why? No one else accompanied them on their march to the dinner-table. Patrick pursued his double task of hunting his thousand speculations and conversing fluently, so that it is not astonishing if, when he retired to his room, the im- pression made on him by this young Caroline was inefficient to distinguish her from the horde of her baptismal sisters. And she had a pleasant face: he was able to see that, and some individuality in the look of it, the next morning; and then he remembered the niceness of her manners. He supposed her to have been educated where the interfusion of a natural liveliness with a veiling retenue gives the title of 22 CELT AND SAXON lady. She had enjoyed the advantage of having an chapter estimable French lady for her governess, she in- Caroline formed him, as they sauntered together on the terrace. *A Protestant, of course,' Patrick spoke as he thought. 'Madame Dugue is a Catholic of Catholics, and the most honourable of women.' 'That I'll believe; and wasn't for proselytisms,' said he. 'Oh, no: she was faithful to her trust.' * Save for the grand example ! ' 'That,' said Caroline, 'one could striv^e to imitate without embracing her faith.' ' There 's my mind clear as print ! ' Patrick exclaimed. ' The Faith of my fathers ! and any pattern you like for my conduct, if it's a good one.' Caroline hesitated before she said : * You have noticed my Uncle Adister's prepossession; I mean, his extreme sensitiveness on that subject,' 'He blazed on me, and he seemed to end by a sort of approval.' She sighed. 'He has had cause for great unhappi- ness.' ' Is it the colonel, or the captain ? Forgive me ! ' Her head shook. 'Is it she? Is it his daughter? I must ask!' ' You have not heard ? ' 'Oh! then, I guessed it,' cried Patrick, with a flash of pride in his arrowy sagacity. ' Not a word have I heard, but I thought it out for myself; because I love my brother, I fancy. And now, if you'll be so good, Miss Caroline, let me beg, it's just the address, or the 23 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER III Caroline city, or the country — where she is, can you tell me ? — just whereabouts! You're surprised: but I want her address, to be off, to see her; I'm anxious to speak to her. It's anywhere she may be in a ring, only show me the ring, I '11 find her, for I 've a load ; and there 's nothing like that for sending you straight, though it's in the dark ; it acts like an instinct. But you know the clear address, and won't let me be running blind- fold. She's on the Continent and has been a long time, and it was the capital of Austria, which is a Catholic country, and they 've Irish blood in the service there, or they had. I could drop on my knees to you! ' The declaration was fortunately hushed by a suppli- cating ardour, or Mr. Adister would have looked more surprised than his niece. He stepped out of the library window as they were passing, and, evidently with a mind occupied by his own affairs, held up an opened letter for Caroline's perusal. She took a view of the handwriting. 'Any others?' she said. 'You will consider that one enough for the day,' was his answer. Patrick descended the terrace and strolled by the waterside, grieved at their having bad news, and vexed with himself for being a stranger, unable to console them. Half an hour later they were all three riding to the market-town, where Mr. Adister paid a fruitless call on his lawyer. 'And never is at home! never was known to be at home when wanted ! ' he said, springing back to the saddle. 24 CELT AND SAXON Caroline murmured some soothing words. They chapter had a perverse effect. car"iine *His partner! yes, his partner is at home, but I do not communicate upon personal business with his partner; and by and by there will be, I suppose, a third partner. I might as well deposit my family history in the hands of a club. His partner is always visible. It is my belief that Camminy has taken a partner that he may act the independent gentleman at his leisure. I, meantime, must continue to be the mark for these letters. I shall expect soon to hear myself abused as the positive cause of the loss of a Crown ! ' 'Mr. Camminy will probably appear at the dinner hour,' said Caroline. * Claret attracts him : I wish I could say as much of duty,' rejoined her uncle. Patrick managed to restrain a bubbling remark on the respective charms of claret and duty, tempting though the occasion was for him to throw in a con- versational word or two. He was rewarded for listening devoutly. Mr. Adister burst out again: 'And why not come over here to settle this transaction herself? — provided that I am spared the presence of her Schinderhannes ! She could very well come. I have now received three letters bearing on this matter within as many months. Down to the sale of her hereditary jewels ! I profess no astonishment. The jewels may well go too, if Crydney and Welvas are to go. Disrooted body and soul ! — for a moonshine title ! — a gaming-table foreign knave ! — Known for a knave ! — A young gentlewoman ? —a wild Welsh . . . ! ' 25 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER Caroline put her horse to a canter, and the exclama- iii CATdline "'^ tions ended, leaving Patrick to shuffle them together and read the riddle they presented, and toss them to the wind, that they might be blown back on him by the powers of air in an intelligible form. 26 CHAPTER IV The Princess Dinner, and a little piano-music and a song closed an evening that was not dull to Patrick in spite of prolonged silences. The quiet course of things within the house appeared to him to have a listening ear for big events outside. He dreaded a single step in the wrong direction, and therefore forbore to hang on any of his conjectures; for he might perchance be unjust to the blessedest heroine on the surface of the earth — a truly awful thought! Yet her name would no longer bear the speaking of it to himself. It conjured up a smoky moon under confounding eclipse. Who was Schinderhannes ? Mr. Adister had said, her Schinderhannes. Patrick merely wished to be informed who the man was, and whether he had a title, and was much of a knave : and particularly Patrick would have liked to be informed of the fellow's religion. But asking was not easy. It was not possible. And there was a barrel of powder to lay a fiery head on, for a pillow! To confess that he had not the courage to inquire was as good as an acknowledgment that he knew too 27 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER much for an innocent questioner. And what did he ^^ „^y know? His brother Philip's fair angel forbade him to The Princess ^ ^ open the door upon what he knew. He took a peep through fancy's keyhole, and delighted himself to think that he had seen nothing. After a turbulent night with Schinderhannes, who let him go no earlier than the opening of a December day, Patrick hied away to one of the dusky nooks by the lake for a bracing plunge. He attributed to his desire for it the strange deadness of the atmosphere* and his incapacity to get an idea out of anything he looked on: he had not a sensation of cold till the stinging element gripped him. It is the finest school for the cure of dreamers ; two minutes of stout watery battle, with the enemy close all round> laughing, but not the less inveterate, convinced him that, in winter at least, we have only to jump out of our clothes to feel the reality of things in a trice. The dip was sharpening ; he could say that his prescription was good for him ; his craving to get an idea ceased with it absolutely, and he stood in far better trim to meet his redoubtable adversary of over- night ; but the rascal was a bandit and had robbed him of his purse ; that was a positive fact ; his vision had gone ; he felt himself poor and empty and rejoicing in the keenness of his hunger for breakfast, singularly lean. A youth despoiled of his vision and made sensible by the activity of his physical state that he is a common machine, is eager for meat, for excess of whatsoever you may offer him ; he is on the highroad of recklessness, and had it been the bottle, instead of Caroline's coffee-cup Patrick would soon have received a priming for a delivery of views upon 28 CELT AND SAXON the sex, and upon love, and the fools known as chapter lovers, acrid enough to win the applause of cynics. ,,^ ./^ ' ^ ^^ •' The Princess Boasting was the best relief that a young man not without modesty could find. Mr. Adister compli- mented him on the robustness of his habits, and Patrick * would like to hear of the temptation that could keep him from his morning swim.' Caroline's needle-thrust was provoked : ' Would not Arctic weather deter you, Mr. O'Don. nell ? ' He hummed, and her eyes filled with the sparkle. ' Short of Arctic,' he had to say. ' But a gallop, after an Arctic bath, would soon spin the blood — upon an Esquimaux dog, of course,' he pursued, to antici- pate his critic's remark on the absence of horses, with a bow. She smiled, accepting the mental alertness he fastened on her. We must perforce be critics of these tear-away wits ; which are, moreover, so threadbare to conceal the character! Caroline led him to vaunt his riding and his shooting, and a certain time passed before she perceived that though he responded naturally to her first sly attacks, his gross exaggerations upon them had not been the triumph of absurdity she supposed herself to have evoked. Her wish was to divert her uncle. Patrick dis- cerned the intention and aided her. * As for entertainment,' he said, in answer to Mr. Adister's courteous regrets that he would have to be a prisoner in the house until his legal adviser thought proper to appear, * I '11 be perfectly happy if Miss Caroline will give me as much of her company as she 29 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER can spare. It 's amusing to be shot at too, by a lady ^^ who 's a good marksman ! And birds and hares are The Princess *=* . always willing to wait for us ; they keep better alive. I forgot to say that I can sing.' 'Then I was in the presence of a connoisseur last night,' said Caroline. Mr. Adister consulted his watch and the mantel- piece clock for a minute of difference between them, remarking that he was a prisoner indeed, and for the whole day, unless Camminy should decide to come. ' There is the library,' he said, * if you care for books ; the best books on agriculture will be found there. You can make your choice in the stables, if you would like to explore the country. I am detained here by a man who seems to think my business of less import- ance than his pleasures. And it is not my business ; it is very much the reverse : but I am compelled to undertake it as my own, when I abhor the business. It is hard for me to speak of it, much more to act a part in it.' * Perhaps,' Caroline interposed hurriedly, * Mr. O'Donnell would not be unwilling to begin the day with some duets ? ' Patrick eagerly put on his shame-face to accept her invitation, protesting that his boldness was entirely due to his delight in music. * But I 've heard,' said he, * that the best fortification for the exercise of the voice is hearty eating, so I '11 pay court again to that game-pie. I 'm one with the pigs for truffles.' His host thanked him for spreading the contagion of good appetite, and followed his example. Robust habits and heartiness were signs with him of a 30 CELT AND SAXON conscience at peace, and he thought the Jesuits chapter particularly forbearing in the amount of harm they p^ had done to this young man. So they were still at table when Mr. Camminy was announced and ushered in. The man of law murmured an excuse or two ; he knew his client's eye, and how to thaw it. 'No, Miss Adister, I have not breakfasted,' he said, taking the chair placed for him. * I was all day yesterday at Windlemont, engaged in assisting to settle the succession. Where estates are not entailed!' * The expectations of the family are undisciplined and certain not to be satisfied,' Mr. Adister carried on the broken sentence. 'That house will fall! How- ever, you have lost no time this morning. — Mr. Patrick O'Donnell.' Mr. Camminy bowed busily somewhere in the direc- tion between Patrick and the sideboard. ' Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians,' Mr. Adister resumed, talking to blunt his impatience for a private discussion with his own. ' Surgery 's a little in their practice too, we think in Ireland,' said Patrick. Mr. Camminy assented : * No doubt.' He was hungry, and enjoyed the look of the table, but the look of his client chilled the prospect, considered in its genial appearance as a feast of stages; having luminous extension ; so, to ease his client's mind, he ventured to say : * I thought it might be urgent.' *It is urgent,' was the answer. * Ah : foreign ? domestic ? ' A frown replied. Caroline, in haste to have her duties over, that she might escape the dreaded outburst, pressed another 31 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER cup of tea on Mr. Camminy and groaned to see him ^^ fill his plate. She tried to start a topic with Patrick. The Princess *The princess is well, I hope?' Mr. Camminy asked in the voice of discretion. 'It concerns her Highness ? ' * It concerns my daughter and her inheritance from her mad grandmother!' Mr. Adister rejoined loudly; and he continued like a retreating thunder : * A princess with a title as empty as a skull ! At best a princess of swamps, and swine that fight for acorns, and men that fight for swine ! ' Patrick caught a glance from Caroline, and the pair rose together. * They did that in our mountains a couple of thou- sand years ago,' said Mr. Camminy, ' and the cause was not so bad, to judge by this ham. Men must fight : the law is only a quieter field for them.' ': famous delineation of the adventurer prince in which a not very worthy gentleman's chronic fever of abomi- nation made him really eloquent, quick to unburden himself in the teeth of decorum. 'And my son-in-law! My son-in-law!' ejaculated Mr. Adister, tossing his head higher, and so he stimu- lated his amazement and abhorrence of the portrait he rather wondered at them for not desiring to have sketched for their execration of it, alluringly foul as it was: while they in concert drew him back to the discussion of his daughter's business, reiterating prudent counsel, with a knowledge that they had only to wait for the ebbing of his temper. * Let her be informed, sir, that by coming to England she can settle the business according to her wishes in one quarter of the time it would take a Commission sent out to her — if we should be authorised to send out one,' said Mr. Camminy. 'By committing the business to you, I fancy I perceive your daughter's disposition to consider your feelings: possibly to a reluctance to do the deed unsanctioned by her father. It would appear so to a cool observer, notwithstanding her inattention to your remon- strances.' The reply was: *Dine here and sleep here. I shall be having more of these letters,' Mr. Adister added, profoundly sighing. Caroline slipped away to mark a conclusion to the 47 Cambrian race CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER debate ; and Mr. Camminy saw his client redden fast Aconliita- and frown. tion: with < Besidcs,' he spoke in a husky voice, descending wljrshwomen" ^P^" ^ subjcct hatcful, * shc tclls me to-day she is not and the in a State to travel! Do you hear? Make what you can of it.' The proud and injured gentleman had the aspect of one who receives a blow that it is impossible for him to resent. He could not speak the shame he felt: it was literally in his flesh. But the cause had been sufficiently hinted to set the lawyer staring as men do when they encounter situations of grisly humour, where certain of the passions of man's developed nature are seen armed and furious against our mild prevailing ancient mother nature ; and the contrast is between our utter wrath and her simple exposition of the circumstances and consequences forming her laws. There are situations which pass beyond the lightly stirred perceptive wits to the quiet court of the intel- lect, to be received there as an addition to our acquaint- ance with mankind. We know not of what substance to name them. Humour in its intense strain has a seat somewhere about the mouth of tragedy, giving it the enigmatical faint wry pull at a corner visible at times upon the dreadful mask. That Mr. Adister should be astonished at such a communication from the princess, after a year of her marriage: and that he should take it for a further outrage of his paternal sentiments, should actually redden and be hoarse in alluding to it: the revelation of such points in our human character set the humane old lawyer staring at the reserve space within himself apart from his legal being, whereon he by fits com- 48 CELT AND SAXON pared his own constitution with that of the individuals chapter revealed to him by their acts and confidential utter- , ^ ^\. •^ A Consulta- ances. For him, he decided that he would have tion: with rejoiced at the news. ^S^:!:^:: Granting the prince a monster, however, as Mr. an^the Adister unforcedly considered him, it was not so ^"^ "anrace cheering a piece of intelligence that involved him yet closer with that man's rank blood : it curdled his own. The marriage had shocked and stricken him, cleaving, in his love for his daughter, a goodly tree and wither- ing many flowers. Still the marriage was but Adiante's gulf: he might be called father-in-law of her spangled ruffian ; son-in-law, the desperado-rascal would never be called by him. But the result of the marriage dragged him bodily into the gulf: he became one of four, numbering the beast twice among them. The subtlety of his hatred so reckoned it ; for he could not deny his daughter in the father's child ; he could not exclude its unhallowed father in the mother's : and of this man's child he must know and own himself the grandfather. If ever he saw the child, if drawn to it to fondle it, some part of the little animal not his daughter's would partake of his embrace. And if neither of his boys married, and his girl gave birth to a son ! darkness rolled upon that avenue of vision. A trespasser and usurper — one of the demon's brood chased his very name out of Earlsfont! 'Camminy, you must try to amuse yourself,' he said briskly. 'Anything you may be wanting at home shall be sent for. I must have you here to make sure that I am acting under good advice. You can take one of the keepers for an hour or two of shooting. I may join you in the afternoon. 35— D 49 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER You will find occupation for your gun in the north. AConlilta- COVCrS.' tion: with He wandcrcd about the house, looking into several wirshwomen" rooms, and only partially at rest when he discovered and the Caroline in one, engaged upon some of her aquarelle cambnanrace gj^g^^^j^gg^ j^c askcd whcrc the young Irishman was. 'Are you in search of him?' said she. 'You like him, uncle ? He is out riding, they tell me.' 'The youngster is used to south-western showers in that climate of his,' Mr. Adister replied. ' I dare say we could find the Jesuit in him somewhere. There's the seed. His cousin Con O'Donnell has filled him with stuff about Ireland and England : the man has no better to do than to train a parrot. What do you think of him, my love ? ' The judgement was not easily formed for expres- sion. *He is not quite like what I remember of his brother Philip. He talks much more, does he not ? He seems more Irish than his brother. He is very strange. His feelings are strong; he has not an idea of concealing them. For a young man educated by the Jesuits, he is remarkably open.' 'The Jesuits might be of service to me just now! ' Mr. Adister addressed his troubled soul, and spoke upon another conception of them : ' How has he shown his feelings ? ' Caroline answered quickly: 'His love of his brother. Anything that concerns his brother moves him ; it is like a touch on a musical instrument. Perhaps I should say a native one.' 'Concerns his brother?' Mr Adister inquired, and his look requesting enlightenment told her she might speak. 50 CELT AND SAXON 'Adiante,' she said softly. She coloured. chapter VI Her uncle mused awhile in a half-somnolent gloom. ^ consuita- ' He talks of this at this present day ? ' tion: with * It is not dead to him. He really appears to have w^eiThwomen" hoped ... he is extraordinary. He had not heard ^". .X" X her. Ay, and so has Philip : though the worst is, The Miniature ^ J ^ r o 7 they 're likely to drive him out of the army into politics and Parliament ; and an Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances. Ah, but she would have kept him straight. Not a soldier alive knows the use of cavalry better than my brother. He wanted just that English wife to steady him and pour drops of universal fire into him ; to keep him face to face with the world, I mean ; letting him be true to his country in a fair degree, but not an old rainpipe and spout. She would have held him to his pro- fession. And, Oh dear ! She 's a friend worth having, lost to Ireland. I see what she could have done there. Something bigger than an island, too, has to be served in our days : that is, if we don't forget our duty at home. Poor Paddy, and his pig, and his bit of earth \ If you knew what we feel for him! I'm a landlord, but I'm one with my people about evictions. We Irish take strong root. And honest rent paid over to absentees, through an agent, if you think of it, seems like flinging the money that's the sweat of the brow into a stone conduit to roll away to a giant maw hungry as the sea. It's the bleeding to death of our land! Transactions from hand to hand of warm human flesh — nothing else will do : I mean, for men of our blood. Ah ! she would have kept my brother temperate in his notions and his plans. And why absentees, Miss Adister? Because we've no centre of home life : the core has been taken out of us ; our country has no hearth-fire. I 'm for union ; only there should be justice, and a little knowledge to make allowance for the natural cravings of a diff'erent kind 64 CELT AND SAXON of people. Well, then, and I suppose that inter- chapter VII The Miniature marriages are good for both. But here comes a man, ^" the boldest and handsomest of his race, and he offers himself to the handsomest and sweetest of yours, and she leans to him, and the family won't have him. For he 's an Irishman and a Catholic. Who is it then opposed the proper union of the two islands? Not Philip. He did his best ; and if he does worse now he 's not entirely to blame. The misfortune is, that when he learns the total loss of her on that rock- promontory, he'll be dashing himself upon rocks sure to shiver him. There 's my fear. If I might take him this . . .?' Patrick pleaded with the miniature raised like the figure of his interrogation. Caroline's inward smile threw a soft light of humour over her features at the simple cunning of his wind-up to the lecture on his country's case, which led her to perceive a similar cunning simplicity in his identifica- tion of it with Philip's. It startled her to surprise, for the reason that she 'd been reviewing his freakish hops from Philip to Ireland and to Adiante, and wondering, in a different kind of surprise, how and by what profitless ingenuity he contrived to weave them together. Nor was she unmoved, notwithstanding her fancied perception of his Jesuitry : his look and his voice were persuasive ; his love of his brother was deep ; his change of sentiment toward Adiante after the tale told him by her old nurse Jenny, stood for proof of a generous manliness. Before she had replied, her uncle entered the armoury, and Patrick was pleading still, and she felt herself to be a piece of damask, a very fiery dye. 35— E 65 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER To disentangle herself, she said on an impulse, The mniature desperately: *Mr. O'Donnell begs to have the miniature for his brother.' Patrick swung instantly to Mr. Adister. *I presumed to ask for it, sir, to carry it to Philip. He is ignorant about the princess as yet: he would like to have a bit of the wreck. I shan't be a pleasant messenger to him. I should be glad to take him something. It could be returned after a time. She was a great deal to Philip — three parts of his life. He has nothing of her to call his own.' * That ! ' said Mr. Adister. He turned to the virgin Adiante, sat down and shut his eyes, fetching a breath. He looked vacantly at Patrick. * When you find a man purely destructive, you think him a devil, don't you?' he said. *A good first cousin to one,' Patrick replied, watch- ful for a hint to seize the connectionc *If you think of hunting to-day, we have not many minutes to spare before we mount. The meet is at eleven, five miles distant. Go and choose your horse. Caroline will drive there.' Patrick consulted heron a glance for counsel. *I shall be glad to join you, sir, for to-morrow I must be off to my brother.' 'Take it,' Mr. Adister waved his hand hastily. He gazed at his idol of untouched eighteen. * Keep it safe,' he said, discarding the sight of the princess. 'Old houses are doomed to burnings, and a devil in the family may bring us to ashes. And some day . . . ! ' he could not continue his thought upon what he might be destined to wish for, and ran it on to, 66 CELT AND SAXON * Some day I shall be happy to welcome your brother, chapter when it pleases him to visit me.' Patrick bowed, oppressed by the mighty gift. *I haven't the word to thank you with, sir.' Mr. Adister did not wait for it. * I owe this to you, Miss Adister,' said Patrick. Her voice shook : ' My uncle loves those who loved her.' He could see she was trembling. When he was alone his ardour of gratefulness enabled him to see into her uncle's breast : the inflexible frigidity ; lasting regrets and remorse; the compassion for Philip in kinship of grief and loss ; the angry dignity ; the stately generosity. He saw too, for he was clear-eyed when his feelings were not over-active, the narrow pedestal whereon the stiff figure of a man of iron pride must accommo- date itself to stand in despite of tempests without and within; and how the statue rocks there, how much more pitiably than the common sons of earth who have the broad common field to fall down on and our good mother's milk to set them on their legs again. VII The Miniature 67 CHAPTER VIII Captain Con and Mrs. Adister O'Donnell Riding homeward from the hunt at the leisurely trot of men who have steamed their mounts pretty well, Mr. Adister questioned Patrick familiarly about his family, and his estate, and his brother's prospects in the army, and whither he intended first to direct his travels : questions which Patrick understood to be kindly put for the sake of promoting conversation with a companion of unripe age by a gentleman who had wholesomely excited his blood to run. They were answered, except the last one. Patrick had no immediate destination in view. 'Leave Europe behind you,' said Mr. Adister warm- ing, to advise him, and checking the trot of his horse. 'Try South America.' The lordly gentleman plotted out a scheme of colonisation and conquest in that region with the coolness of a practised freebooter. 'No young man is worth a job,' he said, 'who does not mean to be a leader, and as leader to have dominion. Here we are fettered by ancestry and antecedents. Had I to recommence without those encumbrances, I would try my fortune yonder. I stood condemned to waste my youth in idle parades, and hunting the 68 CELT AND SAXON bear and buffalo. The estate you have inherited is chapter not binding on you. You can realise it, and begin by captain con taking over two or three hundred picked Irish and and Mrs. English — have both races capable of handling spade o Donneii and musket ; purchasing some thousands of acres to establish a legal footing there. You increase your colony from the mother country in the ratio of your prosperity, until your power is respected, and there is a necessity for the extension of your territory. When you are feared you will be on your mettle. They will favour you with provocation. I should not doubt the result, supposing myself to have under my sole com- mand a trained body of men of English blood — and Irish.' * Owners of the soil,' rejoined Patrick, much mar- velling. 'Undoubtedly, owners of the soil, but owing you service.' ' They fight, sir.' *It is hardly to be specified in the calculation, know- ing them. Soldiers who have served their term, parti- cularly old artillerymen, would be my choice : young fellows and boys among them. Women would have to be taken. Half-breeds are the ruin of colonists. Our men are born for conquest. We were conquerors here, and it is want of action and going physically forward that makes us a rusty people. There are ' — Mr. Adister's intonation told of his proposing a wretched alternative, — 'the Pacific Islands, but they will soon be snapped up by the European and North American Governments, and a single one of them does not offer space. It would require money and a navy.' He mused. ' South America is the quarter I should decide 69 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER VIII Captain Con and Mrs. Adister O'Donnell for, as a young man. You are a judge of horses; you ride well ; you would have splendid pastures over there; you might raise a famous breed. The air is fine ; it would suit our English stock. We are on ground, Mr. O'Donnell, which my forefathers contested sharply and did not yield.' ' The owners of the soil had to do that,' said Patrick. ' I can show the same in my country, with a difference.' 'Considerably to your benefit.' 'Everything has been crushed there barring the contrary opinion.' *I could expect such a remark from a rebel.* 'I 'm only interpreting the people, sir.' 'Jump out of that tinder-box as soon as you can. When I was in South America, it astonished me that no Englishman had cast an eye on so inviting a land. Australia is not comparable with it. And where colonisations have begun without system, and with- out hard fighting to teach the settlers to value good leadership and respect their chiefs, they tumble into Republics.' Patrick would have liked to fling in a word about the Englishman's cast of his eye upon inviting lands, but the trot was resumed, the lord of Earlsfont having delivered his mind, and a minute made it happily too late for the sarcastic bolt. Glad that his tongue had been kept from wagging, he trotted along beside his host in the dusky evening over the once contested land where the gentleman's forefathers had done their deeds and firmly fixed their descendants. A remainder of dull red fire prolonged the half-day above the mountain strongholds of the former owners of the soil, upon which prince and bard and priest, and 70 CELT AND SAXON grappling natives never wanting for fierceness, roared chapter to-arms in the beacon-flames from ridge to peak : and ,, »^"l,„ ^ ^ Captain Con down they poured, and back they were pushed by the and Mrs. ' tcr inveterate coloniser — stationing at threatened points q-do*" his old 'artillerymen' of those days: and so it ends, that bard and priest and prince ; holy poetry, and divine prescription, and a righteous holding; are as naught against him. They go, like yonder embers of the winter sunset before advancing night: and to- morrow the beacon-heaps are ashes, the conqueror's foot stamps on them, the wind scatters them ; strangest of all, you hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law. Patrick was too young to philosophise upon his ideas; or else the series of pictures projected by the troops of sensations running through him were not of a solidity to support any structure of philosophy. He reverted, though rather in name than in spirit, to the abstractions, justice, consistency, right. They were too hard to think of, so he abandoned the puzzle of fitting them to men's acts and their consciences, and he put them aside as mere titles employed for the uses of a police and a tribunal to lend an appearance of legitimacy to the decrees of them that have got the upper hand. An insurrectionary rising of his breast on behalf of his country was the consequence. He kept it down by turning the whole hubbub within him to the practical contemplation of a visionary South America as the region for him and a fighting tenantry. With a woman, to crown her queen there, the prospect was fair. But where dwelt the woman possessing majesty suitable to such a dream in her heart or her head? The best he had known in Ireland and 71 CELT AND SAXON CHAPTER VIII Captain Con and Mrs. Adister O'Donnell in France, preferred the charms of society to bold adventure. All the same, thought he, it's queer counsel, that we should set to work by buying a bit of land to win a clean footing to rob our neighbours : and his brains took another shot at Mr. Adister, this time without penetrating. He could very well have seen the matter he disliked in a man that he disliked ; but the father of Adiante had touched him with the gift of the miniature. Patrick was not asked to postpone his departure from Earlsfont, nor was he invited to come again. Mr. Adister drove him to the station in the early morning, and gave him a single nod from the phaeton- box for a good-bye. Had not Caroline assured him at the leave-taking between them that he had done her uncle great good by his visit, the blank of the usual ceremonial phrases would have caused him to fancy himself an intruder courteously dismissed, never more to enter the grand old Hall. He was further comforted by hearing the stationmaster's exclamation of astonish- ment and pleasure at the sight of the squire 'in his place ' handling the reins, which had not been wit- nessed for many a day : and so it appeared that the recent guest had been exceptionally complimented. 'But why not a warm word, instead of turning me off to decipher a bit of Egyptian on baked brick,' he thought, incurably Celtic as he was. From the moment when he beheld Mr. Adister's phaeton mounting a hill that took the first leap for the Cambrian highlands, up to his arrival in London, scarcely one of his * ideas ' darted out before Patrick, as they were in the habit of doing, like the enchanted 72 CELT AND SAXON hares of fairyland, tempting him to pursue, and chapter changing into the form of woman ever, at some capuin con turn of the chase. For as he had travelled down toa"