Roland Cashel, Volume I (of II)

M. Kennyfeck.

Invite Jones and Softly to meet us at dinner.

The clock on the mantelpiece now struck seven; and scarcely had the last chime died away as a carriage drove up to the door.

“Here they come, I suppose,” said Mrs. Kennyfeck, with a half-sigh.

“No, mamma; it is a hackney-coach. Mr. Jones, or Mr. Softly, perhaps.”

“Oh, dear! I had forgotten them. How absurd it was to ask these people, and your father not here.”

The door opened, and the servant announced the Rev. Mr. Knox Softly. A very tall, handsome young man entered, and made a most respectful but cordial salutation to the ladies. He was in look and mien the beau idéal of health, strength, and activity, with bright, full blue eyes, and cheeks rosy as the May. His voice, however, was subdued to the dulcet accent of a low whisper, and his step, as he crossed the room, had the stealthy noiselessness of a cat’s approach.

“Mr. Kennyfeck quite restored, I hope, from the fatigue of his journey?”

“We ‘ve not seen him yet,” replied his lady, almost tartly. “He ought to have been here at four o’clock, and yet it’s past seven.”

“I think I hear a carriage.”

“Another – ,” hackney, Miss Kennyfeck was about to say, when she stopped herself, and, at the instant, Counsellor Clare Jones was announced.

This gentleman was a rising light of the Irish bar, who had the good fortune to attract Mr. Kennyfeck’s attention, and was suddenly transferred from the dull duties of civil bills and declarations to business of a more profitable kind. He had been somewhat successful in his college career, – carried off some minor honors; was a noisy member of a debating society; wrote leaders for some provincial papers; and with overbearing powers of impudence, and a good memory, was a very likely candidate for high forensic honor.

Unlike the first arrival, the Counsellor had few, if any, of the forms of good society in his manner or address. His costume, too, was singularly negligent; and as he ran a very dubious hand through a mass of thick and tangled hair on entering, it was easy to see that the greatest part of his toilet was then and there performed. The splashed appearance of his nether garments, and of shoes that might have done honor to snipe-shooting, also showed that the carriage which brought him was a mere ceremonial observance, and, as he would himself say, “the act of conveyance was a surplusage.”

Those who saw him in court pronounced him the most unabashed and cool of men; but there was certainly a somewhat of haste and impetuosity in his drawing-room manner that even a weak observer would have ascribed to awkwardness.

“How do you do, Mrs. Kennyfeck? – how do you do, Miss Kennyfeck? – glad to see you. Ah! Mr. Softly, – well, I hope? Is he come – has he arrived?” A shake of the head replied in the negative. “Very strange; I can’t understand it. We have a consultation with the Solicitor-General to-morrow, and a meeting in chambers at four.”

“I should n’t wonder if Mr. Cashel detained papa; he is very young, you know, and London must be so new and strange to him, poor lad!”

“Yes; but your father would scarce permit it,” said Mrs. Kennyfeck, smartly. “I rather think it must have been some accidental circumstance; coaches are constantly upsetting, and post-horses cannot always be had.”

Mr. Knox Softly smiled benignly, as though to say in these suggestions Mrs. Kennyfeck was displaying a very laudable spirit of uncertainty as to the course of human events.

“Here ‘s Olivia,” said Mrs. Kennyfeck, as her younger daughter entered. “Let us hear her impressions, – full of forebodings, I don’t doubt.”

Miss Olivia Kennyfeck performed her salutations to the guests with the most faultless grace, throwing into her courtesy to the curate a certain air of filial reverence very pretty to behold, and only a little objectionable on the score of the gentleman’s youth and personal attractions; and then, turning to her mother said, —

“You are not uneasy, mamma, I hope? Though, after all, this is about the period of the equinox.”

“Nonsense, child! packets are never lost nowadays in the Irish Channel. It’s merely some sudden freak of gayety, – some London distraction detains them. Will you touch that bell, Mr. Clare Jones? It is better to order dinner.”

There was something peremptory in the lady’s tone and manner that rather damped the efforts at small-talk, – never very vigorous or well-sustained at these ante-dinner moments; nor were any of the party very sorry when the servant announced that the soup was served.

CHAPTER V. HOW ROLAND BECAME ENTITLED TO THE GODFREY BROWNE PROPERTY

The sherry iced, – the company still colder.

    Bell: Images.

The party who now took their seats at table were not made of those ingredients whose admixture accomplishes a social meeting. Their natures, pursuits, and tastes were only sufficiently unlike to suggest want of agreement, without possessing the broad contrasts that invite conversation by their own contrariety. Besides this, there was a sense of constraint over every one, from the absence of the host and his expected guest; and lastly, the very aspect of a gorgeously decorated table, with vacant places, has always a chilling influence over those who sit around. A certain amount of propinquity is as essential to conversation as good roads and easy distances are a necessary condition to a visiting neighborhood. If you cannot address him or her who sits beside you without attracting the attention of the whole table to your remark, you are equally debarred from the commonplaces that induce table-talk, or the smart thing that cannot well be said too publicly.

The dinner here proceeded in very stately quietude, nor were the efforts of Mr. Jones to introduce a conversational spirit at all successful; indeed, that gifted gentleman would have willingly exchanged the unexceptionable cookery and admirably conditioned wine before him for the riotous freedom of a bar mess, – where sour sherry and nisi-prius jokes abounded, and Father Somebody’s song was sure to give the scene a conviviality that only yielded its fascination to blind hookey or spoiled five.

Far otherwise the curate. The angelic smile that sat upon his features mechanically; his low, soft, liquid voice; his gentle gestures; and even his little sallies of pleasantry, were in perfect accordance with the decorous solemnity of a scene where the chink of a cut decanter, or the tingling sound of a silver dish-cover, were heard above the stillness of the company.

If, then, Mr. Knox Softly accompanied the ladies to the door, and followed them out with his eyes with an expression beaming regretfulness at their departure, the Counsellor, very differently minded, surrounded himself with an array of the dessert-dishes and decanters, and prepared to discuss his wine and walnuts to his perfect contentment.

“You have never met this Mr. Roland Cashel, I believe?” said Mr. Softly, as he filled a very large claret glass and tasted it enjoyably.

“Never,” replied Jones, whose teeth were busily engaged in smashing almonds and filberts, in open defiance of a tray of silver nutcrackers before him. “I don’t think he has been in Ireland since a mere child, and very little in England.”

“Then his recovery of the estate was quite unexpected?”

“Mere accident Kennyfeck came upon the proofs when making some searches for a collateral claim. The story is very short. This lad’s father, whose name was Godfrey Cashel, was a poor lieutenant in the 81st, and quartered at Bath, when he chanced to discover that a rich old bachelor there, a certain Godfrey Browne, was a distant relation of his mother. He lost no time in making his acquaintance and explaining the relationship, which, however, brought him no more substantial benefit than certain invitations to dinner and whist parties, where the unfortunate lieutenant lost his half-crowns.

“At length a note came one morning inviting him to breakfast and to ‘transact a little matter of business.’ Poor Godfrey read the words with every commentary that could flatter his hopes, and set out in better spirits than he had known for many a year before. What, then, was his dismay to discover that he was only wanted to witness the old gentleman’s will! – a very significant proof that he was not to benefit by its provisions.

“With a very ill-repressed sigh, the poor lieutenant threw a glance over the half-opened leaves, where leasehold, and copyhold, and freehold, and every other ‘hold’ figured among funded property, consols, and reduced annuities, – with money lent on mortgages, shares in various companies, and What not, – a list only to be equalled by the long catalogue of those ‘next of kin,’ who, to the number of seventeen, were mentioned as reversionary heirs.

“‘You are to sign your name here, Mr. Cashel,’ said the solicitor, pointing to a carefully-scratched portion of the parchment, where already the initials were pencilled for his guidance.

“‘Faith! and it’s at the other side of the book I’d rather see it,’ said the lieutenant, with a sigh.

“‘Not, surely, after seventeen others!’ exclaimed the astonished attorney.

“‘Even so, – a chance is better than nothing.’

“‘What’s that he’s saying?’ interposed the old man, who sat reading his newspaper at the fire. The matter was soon explained by the attorney, and when he finished, Cashel added: ‘That’s just it; and I’m to sail for the Cape on the 4th of next month, and if you ‘ll put me down among the rest of the fellows, I ‘ll send you the best pipe of Constantia you ever tasted, as sure as my name is Godfrey Cashel.’

“The old man threw his spectacles up on his forehead, wiped his eyes, and then, replacing his glasses, took a deliberate survey of the poor lieutenant who had proposed such a very ‘soft’ bargain. ‘Eh! Clinchet,’ said he to the attorney, ‘can we do this for him?’

“‘Nothing easier, sir; let the gentleman come in last, as residuary legatee, and it alters nothing.’

“‘I suppose you count on your good luck,’ said old Browne, grinning.

“‘Oh, then, it’s not from my great experience that way.’ said Cashel. ‘I ‘ve been on the “Duke’s list” for promotion seventeen years already, and, for all I see, not a bit nearer than the first day; but there’s no reason my poor boy should be such an unfortunate devil. Who knows but fortune may make amends to him one of these days? Come, sir, is it a bargain?’

“‘To be sure. I ‘m quite willing; only don’t forget the Constantia. It’s a wine I like a glass of very well indeed, after my dinner.’

“The remainder is easily told; the lieutenant sailed for the Cape, and kept his word, even though it cost him a debt that mortgaged his commission. Old Browne gave a great dinner when the wine arrived, and the very first name on the list of legatees, his nephew, caught a fever on his way home from it, and died in three weeks.

“Kennyfeck could tell us, if he were here, what became of each of them in succession; four were lost, out yachting, at once; but, singular as it may seem, in nineteen years from the day of that will, every life lapsed, and, stranger still, without heirs; and the fortune has now descended to poor Godfrey Cashel’s boy, the lieutenant himself having died in the West Indies, where he exchanged into a native regiment. That is the whole story; and probably in a romance one would say that the thing was exaggerated, so much more strange is truth than fiction.”

“And what kind of education did the young man get?”

“I suppose very little, if any. So long as his father lived, he of course held the position of an officer’s son, – poor, but in the rank of gentleman. After that, without parents, – his mother died when he was an infant, – he was thrown upon the world, and, after various vicissitudes, became a cabin boy on board of a merchantman; then he was said to be a mate of a vessel in the African trade employed on the Gold Coast, – just as probably a slaver; and, last of all, he was lieutenant in the Columbian navy, – which, I take it, is a very good name for piracy. It was in the Havannah we got a trace of him, and I assure you, strange as it may sound, Kennyfeck’s agent had no small difficulty in persuading him to abandon that very free-and-easy service, to assume the rights and immunities of a very large property.