One Of Them

“Poisons the pellucid rills which should fertilize the soul of man! I’m never pounded. O’Connell himself had to confess that he never saw my equal in graceful imagery and figurative embellishment. ‘Listening to O’Shea,’ says he, ‘is like watching a juggler with eight balls flying round and about him. You may think it impossible he ‘ll be in time, but never one of them will he fail to catch.’ That’s what I call oratory. Why is it, I ask, that, when I rise in the house, you ‘d hear a pin drop?”

“Maybe they steal out on their tiptoes,” said Joe, innocently.

“No, sir, they stand hushed, eager, anxious, as were the Greeks of old to catch the words of Ulysses. I only wish you saw old P – working away with his pencil while I ‘m speaking.”

“Making a picture of you, maybe!”

“You are as insolent as you are ignorant, – one of those who, in the unregenerate brutality of their coarse nature, repel the attempts of all who would advocate the popular cause. I have said so over and over again. If you would constitute yourself the friend of the people, take care to know nothing of them; neither associate with them, nor mix in their society: as Tommy Moore said of Ireland, ‘It’s a beautiful country to live out of.’”

“And he was a patriot!” said Joe, contemptuously.

“There are no patriots among those who soar above the miserable limits of a nationality. Genius has no concern with geographies. To think for the million you must forget the man.”

“Say that again. I like the sound of that,” cried Joe, admiringly.

“If anything could illustrate the hopelessness of your class and condition in life,” continued O’Shea, “it is yourself. There you are, daily, hourly associating with one whose sentiments you hear, whose opinions you learn, whose judgments you record; one eagerly sought after in society, revered in private, honored in the Senate; and what have you derived from these unparalleled advantages? What can you say has been the benefit from these relations?”

“It’s hard to say,” muttered Joe, “except, maybe, it’s made me a philosopher.”

“A philosopher! – you a philosopher!”

“Ay; isn’t it philosophy to live without wages, and work without pay? ‘Tis from yourself I heerd that the finest thing of all is to despise money.”

“So it is, – so it would be, I mean, if society had not built up that flimsy card edifice it calls civilization. Put out my blue pelisse with the Astrachan collar, and my braided vest; I shall want to go over to the Villa this morning. But, first of all, take this to the telegraph-office: ‘The O’Shea accepts.’”

“Tear and ages! what is it we’ve got?” asked Joe, eagerly.

“‘The O’Shea accepts,’ – four words if they charge for the ‘O.’ Let me know the cost at once.”

“But why don’t you tell me where we’re going? Is it Jamaica or Jerusalem?”

“Call your philosophy to your aid, and be anxious for nothing,” said O’Shea, pompously. “Away, lose no more time.”

If Joe had been the exponent of his feelings, as he left the room, he would probably have employed his favorite phrase, and confessed himself “humiliated.” He certainly did feel acutely the indignity that had been passed upon him. To live on a precarious diet and no pay was bad enough, but it was unendurable that his master should cease to consult with and confide in him. Amongst the shipwrecked sufferers on a raft, gradations of rank soon cease to be remembered, and of all equalizers there is none like misery! Now, Mr. O’Shea and his man Joe had, so to say, passed years of life upon a raft. They had been storm-tossed and cast away for many a day. Indeed, to push the analogy further, they had more than once drawn lots who should be first devoured; that is to say, they had tossed up whose watch was to go first to the pawnbroker. Now, was it fair or reasonable, if his master discovered a sail in the distance, or a headland on the horizon, that he should conceal the consoling fact, and leave his fellow-sufferer to mourn on in misery? Joe was deeply wounded; he was insulted and outraged.

From the pain of his personal wrongs he was suddenly aroused by the telegraph clerk’s demand for thirty francs.

“Thirty francs for four words?”

“You might send twenty for the same sum,” was the bland reply.

“Faix, and so we will,” said Joe. “Give me a pen and a sheet of paper.”

His first inspirations were so full of vengeance that he actually meditated a distinct refusal of whatever it was had been offered to his master, and his only doubt was how to convey the insolent negative in its most outrageous form. His second and wiser thoughts suggested a little diplomacy; and though both the consideration and the mode of effectuating it cost no small labor, we shall spare the reader’s patience, and give him the result arrived at after nearly an hour’s exertion, the message transmitted by Joe running thus: —

“Send the fullest particulars about the pay and the name of the place we ‘re going to.

“O’Shea.”

“I don’t think there will be many secrets after I see the answer to that; and see it I will, if I tear it open!” said Joe, sturdily, as he held his way back to the inn.

A rather warm discussion ensued on the subject of his long absence, O’Shea remarking that for all the use Joe proved himself he might as well be without a servant, and Joe rejoining that, for the matter of pay and treatment, he might be pretty nearly as well off if he had no master; these polite passages being interchanged while the O’Shea was busily performing with two hair-brushes, and Joe equally industriously lacing his master’s waistcoat, with an artistic skill that the valet of a corpulent gentleman alone attains to, as Joe said a hundred times.

“I wonder why I endure you,” said O’Shea, as he jauntily settled his hat on one side of his head, and carefully arranged the hair on the other.

“And you ‘ll wondher more, when I ‘m gone, why I did n’t go before,” was Joe’s surly rejoinder.

“How did you come by that striped cravat, sir?” asked O’Shea, angrily, as he caught sight of Joe in front.

“I took it out of the drawer.”

“It’s mine, then!”

“It was wonst I did n’t suppose you ‘d wear it after what the widow woman said of you up at the Villa, – that Mrs. Morris. ‘Here ‘s the O’Shea,’ says she, ‘masquerading as a zebra;’ as much as to say it was another baste you was in reality.”

“She never dared to be so insolent”

“She did; I heard it myself.”

“I don’t believe you; I never do believe one word you say.”

“That’s exactly what I hear whenever I say you ‘re a man of fine fortune and good estate; they all cry out, ‘What a lying rascal he is!’”

O’Shea made a spring towards the poker, and Joe as rapidly took up a position behind the dressing-glass.

“Hush!” cried O’Shea, “there’s some one at the door.”

And a loud summons at the same time confirmed the words. With a ready instinct Joe speedily recovered himself, and hastened to open it.

“Is your master at home?” asked a voice.

“Oh, Heathcote, is it you?” exclaimed O’Shea; “Just step into the next room, and I ‘ll be with you in a second or two. Joe, show Captain Heathcote into the drawing-room.”

“I wondher what’s the matter with him?” said Joe, confidentially, as he came back. “I never see any one look so low.”

“So much the better,” said O’Shea, merrily; “it’s a sign he’s coming to pay money. When a man is about to put you off with a promise, he lounges in with an easy, devil-may-care look that seems to say, ‘It’s all one, old fellow, whether you have an I O or the ready tin.’”

“There’s a deal of truth in that,” said Joe, approvingly, and with a look that showed how pleasurable it was to him to hear such words of wisdom.

CHAPTER XX. A DREARY FORENOON

O’Shea swaggered into the room where Heathcote was standing to await him, in the attitude of one who desired to make his visit as brief as might be.

“How good of you to drive over to this dreary spot,” began the Member, jauntily, “where the blue devils seem to have their especial home. I ‘m hipped and bored here as I never was before. Come, sit down; have you breakfasted?”

“Three hours ago.”

“Take some luncheon, then; a glass of sherry, at least.”