Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 37

But his horse, who did not seem quite satisfied of his ident.i.ty with the man, would not permit him to say more, and off he went--half his hopes dispersed in empty air.

"I know I wish," said Cornelius O'Shane to himself, as he stood on the steps, looking after the man and horse, "I wish that that unlucky bowl of punch had remained for ever unmixed, at the bottom of which I found this son-in-law for my poor daughter, my innocent Dora, then unborn; but she must make the best of him for me and herself, since the fates and my word, irrevocable as the Styx, have bound me to him, the purse-proud grazier and mean man--not a remnant of a gentleman! as the father was.

Oh, my poor Dora!"

As King Corny heaved a heartfelt sigh, very difficult to force from his anti-sentimental bosom, Harry Ormond, with a plate of meat in his hand, whistling to his dog to follow him, ran down the steps.

"Leave feeding that dog, and come here to me, Harry," said O'Shane, "and answer me truly such questions as I shall ask."

"_Truly_--if I answer at all," said Harry.

"Answer you must, when I ask you: every man, every gentleman, must answer in all honour for what he does."

"Certainly, answer _for_ what he does," said Harry.

"_For!_--Phoo! Come, none of your tricks upon prepositions to gain time--I never knew you do the like--you'll give me a worse opinion. I'm no schoolmaster, nor you a grammarian, I hope, to be equivocating on monosyllables."

"Equivocate! I never equivocated, sir," said Harry.

"Don't begin now, then," said Cornelius: "I've enough to put me out of humour already--so answer straight, like yourself. What's this you've done to get the ill-will of White Connal, that's just gone?"

Surprised and embarra.s.sed, Ormond answered, "I trust I have not his ill-will, sir."

"You have, sir," said O'Shane.

"Is it possible?" cried Harry, "when we shook hands--You must have misunderstood, or have been misinformed. How do you know, my dear sir?"

"I know it from the man's own lips, see! I can give you a straight answer at once. Now answer me, was there any quarrel between you? and what cause of offence did you give?"

"Excuse me, sir--those are questions which I cannot answer."

"Your blush, young man, answers me enough, and too much. Mark me, I thought I could answer for your honour with my own, and I did so."

"Thank you, sir, and you shall never have reason--"

"Don't interrupt me, young man. What reason can I have to judge of the future, but from the past? I am not an idiot to be bothered with fair words."

"Oh! sir, can you suspect?"

"I suspect nothing, Harry Ormond: I am, I thank my G.o.d, above suspicion.

Listen to me. You know--whether I ever told it you before or not, I can't remember--but whether or not, you _know_ as well as if you were withinside of me--that in my heart's core there's not a man alive I should have preferred for my son-in-law to the man I once thought Harry Ormond, without a penny--"

"Once thought!"

"Interrupt me again, and I'll lave you, sir. In confidence between ourselves, thinking as once I did, that I might depend on your friends.h.i.+p and discretion, equally with your honour, I confessed, I repented a rash promise, and let you see my regret deep enough that my son-in-law will never be what Dora deserves--I said, or let you see as much, no matter which; I am no equivocator, nor do I now unsay or retract a word. You have my secret; but remember when first I had the folly to tell it you, same time I warned you--I warned you, Harry, like the moth from the candle--I warned you in vain. In another tone I warn you now, young man, for the last time--I tell you my promise to me is sacred--she is as good as married to White Connal--fairly tied up neck and heels--and so am I, to all intents and purposes; and if I thought it were possible you could consider her, or make her by any means consider herself, in any other light, I will tell you what I would do--I would shoot myself; for one of us must fall, and I wouldn't choose it should be you, Harry. That's all."

"Oh! hear me, sir," cried Harry, seizing his arm as he turned away, "kill me if you will, but hear me--I give you my word you are from beginning to end mistaken. I cannot tell you the whole--but this much believe, Dora was not the cause of quarrel."

"Then there was a quarrel. Oh, for shame! for shame!--you are not used to falsehood enough yet--you can't carry it through--why did you attempt it with _me_?"

"Sir, though I can't tell you the truth, the foolish truth, I tell you no falsehood. Dora's name, a thought of Dora, never came in question between Mr. Connal and me, upon my honour."

"Your honour!" repeated Cornelius, with a severe look--severe more in its sorrow than its anger. "O Harry Ormond! what signifies whether the name was mentioned? You know she was the thing--the cause of offence.

Stop! I charge you--equivocate no more. If a lie's beneath a gentleman, an equivocation is doubly beneath a man."

CHAPTER XIII.

Harry Ormond thought it hard to bear unmerited reproach and suspicion; found it painful to endure the altered eye of his once kind and always generous, and to him always dear, friend and benefactor. But Ormond had given a solemn promise to White Connal never to mention any thing that had pa.s.sed between them to O'Shane; and he could not therefore explain these circ.u.mstances of the quarrel. Conscious that he was doing right, he kept his promise to the person he hated and despised, at the hazard, at the certainty, of displeasing the man he most loved in the world; and to whom he was the most obliged. While his heart yearned with tenderness towards his adopted father, he endured the reproach of ingrat.i.tude; and while he knew he had acted perfectly honourably, he suffered under the suspicion of equivocation and breach of confidence: he bore it all; and in reward he had the conviction of his own firmness, and an experience, upon trial, of his adherence to his word of honour. The trial may seem but trivial, the promise but weak: still it was a great trial to him, and he thought the promise as sacred as if it had been about an affair of state.

It happened some days after the conversation had pa.s.sed between him and O'Shane, that Cornelius met O'Tara, the gentleman who had laid the bets about the c.o.c.k-fight with Connal; and chancing to ask him what had prevented the intended battle, O'Tara told all he knew of the adventure.

Being a good-natured and good-humoured man, he stated the matter as playfully as possible--acknowledged that they had all been foolish and angry; but that Harry Ormond and Moriarty had at last pacified them by proper apologies. Of what had pa.s.sed afterwards, of the bullying, and the challenge, and the submission, O'Tara knew nothing; but King Corny having once been put on the right scent, soon made it all out. He sent for Moriarty, and cross-questioning him, heard the whole; for Moriarty had not been sworn to secrecy, and had very good ears. When he had been turned out of the stable, he had retreated only to the harness-room, and had heard all that had pa.s.sed. King Corny was delighted with Harry's spirit--and now he was Prince Harry again, and the generous, warm-hearted Cornelius went, in impatience, to seek him out, and to beg his pardon for his suspicions. He embraced him, called him son, and dear son--said he had now found out, no thanks to him, Connal's cause of complaint, and it had nothing to do with Dora.--"But why could not you say so, man?"

He had said so repeatedly.

"Well, so I suppose it is to be made out clearly to be all my fault, that was in a pa.s.sion, and could not hear, understand, or believe.

Well, be it so; if I was unjust, I'll make it up to you, for I'll never believe my own ears, or eyes, against you, Harry, while I live, depend upon it:--if I heard you asking her to marry you, I would believe my ears brought me the words wrong; if I saw you even leading her into the church instead of the chapel, and the priest himself warning me of it, I'd say and think, Father Jos, 'tis a mistake--a vision--or a defect of vision. In short, I love and trust you as my own soul, Harry Ormond, for I did you injustice."

This full return of kindness and confidence, besides the present delight it gave him, left a permanent and beneficial impression upon our young hero's mind. The admiration he felt for O'Shane's generous conduct, and the self-approbation he enjoyed in consequence of his own honourable firmness, had a great effect in strengthening and forming his character: it also rendered him immediately more careful in his whole behaviour towards Miss O'Shane. He was prudent till both aunt and niece felt indignant astonishment. There was some young lady with whom Harry had danced and walked, and of whom he had, without any design, spoken as a pleasing _gentle_ girl. Dora recollected this praise, and joining it with his present distant behaviour toward herself, she was piqued and jealous; and then she became, what probably she would never otherwise have been, quite decided in her partiality for Harry Ormond. The proofs of this were soon so manifest, that many thought, and Miss O'Faley in particular, that Harry was grown stupid, blind, and deaf. He was net stupid, blind, or deaf--he had felt the full power of Dora's personal charms, and his vanity had been flattered by the preference which Dora showed for him. Where vanity is the ruling pa.s.sion, young men are easily flattered into being in love with any pretty, perhaps with any ugly girl, who is, or who affects to be, in love with them. But Harry Ormond had more tenderness of heart than vanity: against the suggestions of his vanity he had struggled successfully; but now his heart had a hard trial. Dora's spirits were failing, her cheek growing pale, her tone of voice was quite softened; sighs would sometimes break forth--persuasive sighs!--Dora was no longer the scornful lady in rude health, but the interesting invalid--the victim going to be sacrificed. Dora's aunt talked of the necessity of _advice_ for her niece's health. Great stress was laid on air and exercise, and exercise on horseback. Dora rode every day on the horse Harry Ormond broke in for her, the only horse she could now ride; and Harry understood _its ways_, and managed it so much better than any body else; and Dora was grown a coward, so that it was quite necessary he should ride or walk beside her. Harry Ormond's tenderness of heart increased his idea of the danger. Her personal charms became infinitely more attractive to him; her defects of temper and character were forgotten and lost in his sense of pity and grat.i.tude; and the struggle of his feelings was now violent.

One morning our young hero rose early, for he could no longer sleep, and he walked out, or, more properly, he rambled, or he strolled, or _streamed_ out, and he took his way--no, his steps were irresistibly led--to his accustomed haunt by the water side, under the hawthorn bank, and there he walked and picked daisies, and threw stones into the lake, and he loitered on, still thinking of Dora and death, and of the circles in the water, and again of the victim and of the sacrifice, when suddenly he was roused from his reverie by a shrill whistle, that seemed to come from the wood above, and an instant afterwards he heard some one shouting, "Harry Ormond!--Harry Ormond!"

"Here!" answered Harry; and as the shouts were repeated he recognized the voice of O'Tara, who now came, whip in hand, followed by his dogs, running down the bank to him.

"Oh! Harry Ormond, I've brought great news with me for all at Corny Castle; but the ladies are not out of their nests, and King Corny's Lord knows how far off. Not a soul or body to be had but yourself here, by good luck, and you shall have the first of the news, and the telling of it."

"Thank you," said Ormond; "and what is the news?"

"First and foremost," said O'Tara, "you know birds of a feather flock together. White Connal, though, except for the c.o.c.k-fighting, I never relished him, was mighty fond of me, and invited me down to Connal's-town, where I've been with him this week--you know that much, I conclude."

Harry owned he did not.

O'Tara wondered how he could help knowing it. "But so it was; we had a great c.o.c.k-fight, and White Connal, who knew none of my _secrets_ in the feeding line, was bet out and out, and angry enough he was; and then I offered to change birds with him, and beat him with his own Ginger by my superiority o' feeding, which he scoffed at, but lookup the bet."

Ormond sighed with impatience in vain--he was forced to submit, and to go through the whole detail of the c.o.c.k-fight. "The end of it was, that White Connal was _worsted_ by his own bird, and then mad angry was he.

So, then," continued O'Tara, "to get the triumph again on his side, one way or another, was the thing. I had the advantage of him in dogs, too, for he kept no hounds--you know he is close, and hounds lead to a gentlemanlike expense; but very fine horses he had, I'll acknowledge, and, Harry Ormond, you can't but remember that one which he could not manage the day he was out riding here with Miss Dora, and you changed with him."

"I remember it well," said Ormond.

"Ay, and he has got reason to remember it now, sure enough."

"Has he had a fall?" said Ormond, stopping.

"Walk on, can't ye--keep up, and I'll tell you all regular."

"There is King Corny!" exclaimed Ormond, who just then saw him come in view.

"Come on, then," cried O'Tara, leaping over a ditch that was between them, and running up to King Corny. "Great news for you, King Corny, I've brought--your son-in-law elect, White Connal, is off."