"Go on--pray go on," said O'Connor, with suppressed but agonized anxiety.

"Now, though my father is very hot about the match," resumed his visitor, "it may appear strange enough to you that _I_ never was.

There are a few--a very few--advantages in the matter, of course, viewing it merely in its worldly aspect. But Lord Aspenly's property is a good deal embarra.s.sed, and he is of violently Whig politics and connections, the very thing most hated by my old Tory uncle, Oliver French, whom my father has been anxious to cultivate; besides, the disparity in years is so very great that it is ridiculous--I might almost say _indecent_--and this even in point of family standing, and indeed of reputation, putting aside every better consideration, is objectionable. I have urged all these things upon my father, and perhaps we should not find any insurmountable obstacle _there_; but the fact is, there is another difficulty, one of which until this morning I never dreamed--the most whimsical difficulty imaginable."

Here the young man raised his eyebrows, and laughed faintly, while he looked upon the floor, and O'Connor, with increasing earnestness, implored him to proceed. "It appears so very absurd and perverse an obstacle," continued Ashwoode, with a very quizzical expression, "that one does not exactly know how to encounter it--to say the truth, I think that the girl is a little--perhaps the least imaginable degree--taken--dazzled--caught by the notion of being a countess; it's very natural, you know, but then I would have expected better from her."

"By heavens, it is impossible!" exclaimed O'Connor, starting to his feet; "I cannot believe it; you must, indeed, my dear Ashwoode, you _must_ have been deceived."

"Well, then," rejoined the young man, "I have lost my skill in reading young ladies' minds--that's all; but even though I should be right--and never believe me if I am _not_ right--it does not follow that the giddy whim won't pa.s.s away just as suddenly as it came; her most lasting impressions--with, I should hope, one exception--were never very enduring. I have been talking to her for nearly half an hour this morning--laughing with her about Lord Aspenly's suit, and building castles in the air about what she will and what she won't do when she's a countess. But, by the way, how did you let her know that you intend returning to France at the end of this month, only, as she told me, however, for a few weeks? She mentioned it yesterday incidentally.

Well, it is a comfort that I hear your secrets, though _you_ won't entrust them to me. But do not, my dear fellow--_do_ not look so very black--you very much overrate the firmness of women's minds, and greatly indeed exaggerate that of my sister's character if you believe that this vexatious whim which has entered her giddy pate will remain there longer than a week. The simple fact is that the excitement and bustle of all this has produced an unusual flow of high spirits, which will, of course, subside with the novelty of the occasion. Pshaw! why so cast down?--there is nothing in the matter to surprise one--the caprice of women knows do rule. I tell you I would almost stake my reputation as a prophet, that when this giddy excitement pa.s.ses away, her feelings will return to their old channel." O'Connor still paced the room in silence. "Meanwhile," continued the young man, "if anything occur to you--if I can be useful to you in any way, command me absolutely, and till you see me next, take heart of grace." He grasped O'Connor's hand--it was cold as clay; and bidding him farewell, once more took his departure.

"Well," thought he, as he threw his leg across his high-bred gelding at the inn door, "I have shot the first shaft home."

And so he had, for the heart at which it was directed, unfenced by suspicion, lay open to his traitorous practices. O'Connor's letter, an urgent and a touching one, was still unanswered; it never for a moment crossed his mind that it had not reached the hand for which it was intended. The maid who had faithfully delivered all the letters which had pa.s.sed between them had herself received it; and young Ashwoode had but the moment before mentioned, from his sister's lips, the subject on which it was written--his meditated departure for France. This, too, it appeared, she had spoken of in the midst of gay and light-hearted trilling, and projects of approaching magnificence and dissipation with his rich and n.o.ble rival. Twice since the delivery of that letter had his servant seen Miss Ashwoode's maid; and in the communicative colloquy which had ensued she had told--no doubt according to well-planned instructions--how gay and unusually merry her mistress was, and how she pa.s.sed whole hours at her toilet, and the rest of her time in the companionship of Lord Aspenly--so that between his lordship's society, and her own preparations for it, she had scarcely allowed herself time to read the letter in question, much less to answer it.

All these things served to fill O'Connor's mind with vague but agonizing doubts--doubts which he vainly strove to combat; fears which had not their birth in an alarmed imagination, but which, alas! were but too surely approved by reason. The notion of a systematic plot, embracing so many agents, and conducted with such deep and h.e.l.lish hypocrisy, with the sole purpose of destroying affections the most beautiful, and of alienating hearts the truest, was a thought so monstrous and unnatural that it never for a second flashed upon his mind; still his heart struggled strongly against despair. Spite of all that looked gloomy in what he saw--spite of the boding suggestions of his worst fears, he would not believe her false to him--that she who had so long and so well loved and trusted him--she whose gentle heart he knew unchanged and unchilled by years, and distance, and misfortunes--that she should, after all, have fallen away from him, and given up that heart, which once was his, to vanity and the hollow glitter of the world--this he could hardly bring himself to believe, yet what was he to think? alas! what?

CHAPTER XVI.

SHOWING SIGNOR PARUCCI ALONE WITH THE WIG-BLOCKS--THE BARONET'S HAND-BELL AND THE ITALIAN'S TASK.

Morley Court was a queer old building--very large and very irregular.

The main part of the dwelling, and what appeared to be the original nucleus, upon which after-additions had grown like fantastic incrustations, was built of deep-red brick, with many recesses and projections and gables, and tall and grotesquely-shaped chimneys, and having broad, jutting, heavily-sashed windows, such as belonged to Henry the Eighth's time, to which period the origin of the building was, with sufficient probability, referred. The great avenue, which extended in a direct line to more than the long half of an Irish mile, led through double rows of splendid old lime-trees, some thirty paces apart, and arching in a vast and shadowy groining overhead, to the front of the building. To the rearward extended the rambling additions which necessity or caprice had from time to time suggested, as the place, in the lapse of years, pa.s.sed into the hands of different masters. One of these excrescences, a quaint little prominence, with a fanciful gable and chimney of its own, jutted pleasantly out upon the green sward, courting the friendly shelter of the wild and graceful trees, and from its cas.e.m.e.nt commanding through the parting boughs no views but those of quiet fields, distant woodlands, and the far-off blue hills. This portion of the building contained in the upper story one small room, to the full as oddly shaped as the outer casing of fantastic masonry in which it was inclosed--the door opened upon a back staircase which led from the lower apartments to Sir Richard's dressing-room; and partly owing to this convenient arrangement, and partly perhaps to the comfort and seclusion of the chamber itself, it had been long appropriated to the exclusive occupation of Signor Jacopo Parucci, Sir Richard's valet and confidential servant. This man was, as his name would imply, an Italian. Sir Richard had picked him up, some thirty years before the period at which we have dated our story, in Naples, where it was said the baronet had received from him very important instructions in the inner mysteries of that golden science which converts chance into certainty--a science in which Sir Richard was said to have become a masterly proficient; and indeed so loudly had fame begun to bruit his excellence therein, that he found it at last necessary, or at least highly advisable, to forego the fascinations of the gaming-table, and to bid to the worship of fortune an eternal farewell, just at the moment when the fickle G.o.ddess promised with golden profusion to reward his devotion.

Whatever his reason was, Sir Richard had been to this man a good master; he had, it was said, and not without reason, enriched him; and, moreover, it was a strange fact, that in all his capricious and savage moods, from whose consequences not only his servants but his own children had no exemption, he had never once treated this person otherwise than with the most marked civility. What the man's services had actually been, and to what secret influence he owed the close and confidential terms upon which he unquestionably stood with Sir Richard, these things were mysteries, and, of course, furnished inexhaustible matter of scandalous speculation among the baronet's dependents and most intimate friends.

The room of which we speak was Parucci's snuggery. It contained in a recess behind the door that gentleman's bed--a plain, low, uncurtained couch; and variously disposed about the apartment an abundance of furniture of much better kind; the recess of the window was filled by a kind of squat press, which was constructed in the lower part, and which contained, as certain adventurous chambermaids averred, having peeped into its dim recesses when some precious opportunity presented itself, among other shadowy shapes, the forms of certain flasks and bottles with long necks, and several tall gla.s.ses of different dimensions. Two or three tables of various sizes of dark shining wood, with legs after the fashion of the nether limbs of hippogriffs and fauns, seemed about to walk from their places, and to stamp and claw at random about the floor. A large, old press of polished oak, with spiral pillars of the same flanking it in front, contained the more precious articles of Signor Parucci's wardrobe. Close beside it, in a small recess, stood a set of shelves, on which were piled various matters, literary and otherwise, among which perhaps none were disturbed twice in the year, with the exception of six or eight packs of cards, with which, for old a.s.sociations' sake, Signor Jacopo used to amuse himself now and again in his solitary hours.

On one of the tables stood two blocks supporting each a flowing black peruke, which it was almost the only duty of the tenant of this interesting sanctuary to tend, and trim, and curl. Upon the dusky tapestry were pinned several coloured prints, somewhat dimmed by time, but evidently of very equivocal morality. A birding-piece and a fragment of a fishing-rod covered with dust, neither of which Signor Parucci had ever touched for the last twenty years, were suspended over the mantelpiece; and upon the side of the recess, and fully lighted by the window, in attestation of his gentler and more refined pursuits, hung a dingy old guitar apparently still in use, for the strings, though a good deal cobbled and knotted, were perfect in number. A huge, high-backed, well-stuffed chair, in which a man might lie as snugly as a kernel in its sh.e.l.l, was placed at the window, and in it reclined the presiding genius of the place himself, with his legs elevated so as to rest upon the broad window-sill, formed by the roof of the mysterious press which we have already mentioned. The Italian was a little man, very slight, with long hair, a good deal grizzled, flowing upon his shoulders; he had a sallow complexion and thin hooked nose, piercing black eyes, lean cheeks, and sharp chin--and altogether a lank, attenuated, and somewhat intellectual cast of face, with, however, a certain expression of malice and cunning about the leer of his eye, as well as in the character of his thin and colourless lip, which made him by no means a very pleasant object to look upon.

"Fine weather--almost Italy," said the little man, lazily pushing open the cas.e.m.e.nt with his foot. "I am surprise, good, dear, sweet Sir Richard, his bell is stop so long quiet. Why is it not go ding, ding, dingeri, dingeri, ding-a-ding, ding, as usual. d.a.m.nation! what do I care he ring de bell and I leesten. We are not always young, and I must be allow to be a leetle deaf when he is allow to be a leetle gouty.

G.o.de blace my body, how hot is de sun. Come down here, leer of Apollo--come to my arm, meestress of my heart--Orpheus' leer, come queekly." This was addressed to the ancient instrument of music which we have already mentioned, and the invitation was accompanied by an appropriate elevation of his two little legs, which he raised until he gently closed his feet upon the sides of the "leer of Apollo," which, with a good deal of dexterity, he unhung from its peg, and conveyed within reach of his hand. He cast a look of fond admiration at its dingy and time-dried face, and forthwith, his heels still resting upon the window-sill, he was soon thrumming a tinkling symphony, none of the most harmonious, and then, with uncommon zeal, he began, to his own accompaniment, to sing some ditty of Italian love. While engaged in this refined and touching employment, he espied, with unutterable indignation, a young urchin, who, attracted by the sounds of his amorous minstrelsy, and with a view to torment the performer, who was an extremely unpopular personage, had stationed himself at a little distance before the cas.e.m.e.nt, and accompanied the vocal performance of the Italian with the most hideous grimaces, and the most absurd and insulting gesticulations.

Signor Parucci would have given a good round sum to have had the engaging boy by the ears; but this he knew was out of the question; he therefore (for he was a philosopher) played and sung on without evincing the smallest consciousness of what was going forward. His plans of vengeance were, however, speedily devised and no less quickly executed. There lay upon the window-sill a fragment of biscuit, which in the course of an ecstatic flourish the little man kicked carelessly over. The bait had hardly touched the ground beneath the cas.e.m.e.nt when Jacopo, continuing to play and sing the while, and apparently unconscious of anything but his own music, to his infinite delight beheld the boy first abate his exertions, and finally put an end to his affronting pantomime altogether, and begin to manoeuvre in the direction of the treacherous windfall. The youth gradually approached it, and just at the moment when it was within his grasp, Signor Parucci, with another careless touch of his foot, sent over a large bow-pot well stored with clay, which stood upon the window-block. The descent of this ponderous missile was followed by a most heart-stirring acclamation from below; and good Mr. Parucci, clambering along the window-sill, and gazing downward, was regaled by the spectacle of the gesticulating youth stamping about the gra.s.s among what appeared to be the fragments of a hundred flower-pots, writhing and bellowing in transports of indignation and bodily torment.

"Povero ragazzo--Carissimo figlio," exclaimed the valet, looking out with an expression of infinite sweetness, "my dear child and charming boy, how 'av you broke my flower-pote, and when 'av you come here. Ah!

per Bacco, I think I 'av see you before. Ah! yees, you are that sweetest leetel boy that was leestening at my music--so charming just now. How much clay is on your back! a cielo! amiable child, you might 'av keel yourself. Sacro numine, what an escape! Say your prayer, and thank heaven you are safe, my beautiful, sweetest, leetel boy. G.o.d blace you. Now rone away very fast, for fear you pool the other two flower-potes on your back, sweetest child. G.o.de bless you, amiable boy--they are very large and very heavy."

The youth took the hint, and having had quite enough of Mr. Parucci's music for the evening, withdrew under the combined influences of fury and lumbago. The little man threw himself back in his chair, and hugged his shins in sheer delight, grinning and chattering like a delirious monkey, and rolling himself about, and laughing with the most exquisite relish. At length, after this had gone on for some time, with the air of a man who has had enough of trifling, and must now apply himself to matters of graver importance, he arose, hung up his guitar, sent his chair, which was upon casters, rolling to the far end of the room, and proceeded to arrange the curls of one of the two magnificent perukes, on which it was his privilege to operate. After having applied himself with uncommon attention to this labour of taste for some time in silence, he retired a few paces to contemplate the effect of his performance--whereupon he fell into a musing mood, and began after his fashion to soliloquize with a good deal of energy and volubility in that dialect which had become more easy to him than his mother tongue.

"_Corpo di Bacco!_ what thing is life! who would believe thirty years ago I should be here now in a barbaroose island to curl the wig of an old gouty blackguard--but what matter. I am a philosopher--d.a.m.nation--it is very well as it is--per Bacco! I can go way when I like. I am reech leetle fellow, and with Sir Richard, good Sir Richard, I do always whatever I may choose. Good Sir Richard," he continued, addressing the block on which hung the object of his tasteful labours, as if it had been the baronet in person--"good Sir Richard, why are you so kind to me, when you are so cross as the old devil in h.e.l.l with all the rest of the world?--why, why, why? Shall I say to you the reason, good, kind Sir Richard? Well, I weel. It is because you dare not--dare not--dare not-da-a-a-are not vaix me. I am, you know, dear Sir Richard, a poor, leetle foreigner, who is depending on your goodness.

I 'ave nothing but your great pity and good charity--oh, no! I am nothing at all; but still you dare not vaix me--you moste not be angry--note at all--but very quiet--you moste not go in a pa.s.sion--oh!

never--weeth me--even if I was to make game of you, and to insult you, and to pool your nose."

Here the Italian seized, with the tongs which he had in his hand, upon that prominence in the wooden block which corresponded in position with the nose, which at other times the peruke overshadowed, and with a grin of infinite glee pinched and twisted the iron instrument until the requirements of his dramatic fancy were satisfied, when he delivered two or three sharp knocks on the smooth face of the block, and resumed his address.

"No, no--you moste not be angry, fore it would be great misfortune--oh, it would--if you and I should quarrel together; but tell me now, old _truffatore_--tell me, I say, am I not very quiet, good-nature, merciful, peetying faylow? Ah, yees--very, very--_Madre di Dio_--very moche; and dear, good Sir Richard, shall I tell you why I am so very good-nature? It is because I love you joste as moche as you love me--it is because, most charitable patron, it is my convenience to go on weeth you quietly and 'av no fighting yet--bote you are going to get money.

Oh! so coning you are, you think I know nothing--you think I am asleep--bote I know it--I know it quite well. You think I know nothing about the land you take from Miss Mary. Ah! you are very coning--oh!

very; but I 'av hear it all, and I tell you--and I swear _per sangue di D----_, when you get that money I shall, and will, and moste--_mo-ooste_ 'av a very large, comfortable, beeg handful--do you hear me? Oh, you very coning old rascal; and if you weel not geeve it, oh, my dear Sir Richard, ech.e.l.lent master, I am so moche afaid we will 'av a fight between us--a quarrel--that will spoil our love and friendship, and maybe, helas! horte your reputation--shoking--make the gentlemen spit on you, and avoid you, and call you all the ogly names--oh! shoking."

Here he was interrupted by a loud ringing in Sir Richard's chamber.

"There he is to pool his leetle bell--d.a.m.nation, what noise. I weel go up joste now--time enough, dear, good, patient Sir Richard--time enough--oh, plainty, plainty."

The little man then leisurely fumbled in his pocket until he brought forth a bunch of keys, from which, having selected one, he applied it to the lock of the little press which we have already mentioned, whence he deliberately produced one of the flasks which we have hinted at, along with a tall gla.s.s with a spiral stem, and filling himself a b.u.mper of the liquor therein contained, he coolly sipped it to the bottom, accompanied throughout the performance by the incessant tinkling of Sir Richard's hand-bell.

"Ah, very good, most ech.e.l.lent--thank you, Sir Richard, you 'av give me so moche time and so moche music, I 'av drunk your very good health."

So saying, he locked up the flask and gla.s.s again, and taking the block which had just represented Sir Richard in the imaginary colloquy in his hand, he left his own chamber, and ran upstairs to the baronet's dressing-room. He found his master alone.

"Ah, Jacopo," exclaimed the baronet, looking somewhat flushed, but speaking, nevertheless, in a dulcet tone enough, "I have been ringing for nearly ten minutes; but I suppose you did not hear me."

"Joste so as you 'av say," replied the man. "Your _signoria_ is very seldom wrong. I was so charmed with my work I could not hear nothing."

"Parucci," rejoined Sir Richard, after a slight pause, "you know I keep no secrets from you."

"Ah, you flatter me, Signor--you flatter me--indeed you do," said the valet, with ironical humility.

His master well understood the tone in which the fellow spoke, but did not care to notice it.

"The fact is, Jacopo," continued Sir Richard, "you already know so many of my secrets, that I have now no motive in excluding you from any."

"Goode, kind--oh, very kind," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the valet.

"In short," continued his master, who felt a little uneasy under the praises of his attendant--"in short, to speak plainly, I want your a.s.sistance. I know your talents well. You can imitate any handwriting you please to copy with perfect accuracy. You must copy, in the handwriting of this ma.n.u.script, the draft of a letter which I will hand you this evening. You require some little time to study the character; so take the letter with you, and be in my room at ten to-night. I will then hand you the draft of what I want written. You understand?"

"Understand! To be sure--most certilly I weel do it," replied the Italian, "so that the great devil himself will not tell the writing of the two, _l'un dall' altro_, one from the other. Never fear--geeve me the letter. I must learn the writing. I weel be here to-night before you are arrive, and I weel do it very fast, and so like--bote you know how well I can copy. Ah! yees; you know it, Signor. I need not tell."

"No more at present," said the baronet, with a gesture of caution.

"a.s.sist me to dress."

The Italian accordingly was soon deep in the mysteries of his elaborate functions, where we shall leave him and his master for the present.

CHAPTER XVII.

DUBLIN CASTLE BY NIGHT--THE DRAWING-ROOM--LORD WHARTON AND HIS COURT.

Sir Richard Ashwoode had set his heart upon having Lord Aspenly for his son-in-law; and all things considered, his lordship was, perhaps, according to the standard by which the baronet measured merit, as good a son-in-law as he had any right to hope for. It was true, Lord Aspenly was neither very young nor very beautiful. Spite of all the ingenious arts by which he reinforced his declining graces, it was clear as the light that his lordship was not very far from seventy; and it was just as apparent that it was not to any extraordinary supply of bone, muscle, or flesh that his vitality was attributable. His lordship was a little, spindle-shanked gentleman, with the complexion of a consumptive frog, and features as sharp as edged tools. He condescended to borrow from the artistic talents of his valet the exquisite pencilling of his eyebrows, as well as the fine black line which gave effect to a set of imaginary eyelashes, and depth and brilliancy to a pair of eyes which, although naturally not very singularly effective, had, nevertheless, nearly as much vivacity in them as they had ever had. His smiles were perennial and unceasing, very winning and rather ghastly. He used much gesticulation, and his shrug was absolutely Parisian. To all these perfections he added a wonderful facility in rounding the periods of a compliment, and an inexhaustible affluence of something which pa.s.sed for conversation. Thus endowed, and having, moreover, the additional recommendation of a handsome income, a peerage, and an unenc.u.mbered celibacy, it is hardly wonderful that his lordship was unanimously voted by all prudent and discriminating persons, without exception, the most fascinating man in all Ireland. Sir Richard Ashwoode was not one whit more in earnest in desiring the match than was Lord Aspenly himself. His lordship had for some time begun to suspect that he had nearly sown his wild oats--that it was time for him to reform--that he was ripe for the domestic virtues, and ought to renounce scamp-hood. He therefore, in the laboratory of his secret soul, compounded a virtuous pa.s.sion, which he resolved to expend upon the first eligible object who might present herself. Mary Ashwoode was the fortunate damsel who first happened to come within the scope and range of his lordship's premeditated love; and he forthwith in a matrimonial paroxysm applied, according to the good old custom, not to the lady herself, but to Sir Richard Ashwoode, and was received with open arms.

The baronet indeed, as the reader is aware, antic.i.p.ated many difficulties in bringing the match about; for he well knew how deeply his daughter's heart was engaged, and his misgivings were more sombre and frequent than he cared to acknowledge even to himself. He resolved, however, that the thing should be; and he was convinced, that if his lordship only were firm, spite of fate he would effect it. In order then to inspire Lord Aspenly with this desirable firmness, he not unwisely believed that his best course was to exhibit him as much as possible in public places, in the character of the avowed lover of Mary Ashwoode; a position which, when once unequivocally a.s.sumed, afforded no creditable retreat, except through the gates of matrimony. It was arranged, therefore, that the young lady, under the protection of Lady Stukely, and accompanied by Lord Aspenly and Henry Ashwoode, should attend the first drawing-room at the Castle, a ceremonial which had been fixed to take place a few days subsequently to the arrival of Lord Aspenly at Morley Court. Those who have seen the Castle of Dublin only as it now stands, have beheld but the creation of the last sixty or seventy years, with the exception only of the wardrobe tower, an old grey cylinder of masonry, very dingy and dirty, which appears to have gone into half mourning for its departed companions, and presents something of the imposing character of an overgrown, mouldy band-box.

At the beginning of the last century, however, matters were very different. The trim brick buildings, with their s.p.a.cious windows and symmetrical regularity of structure, which now complete the quadrangles of the castle, had not yet appeared; but in their stead ma.s.ses of building, constructed with very little attention to architectural precision, either in their individual formation or in their relative position, stood ranged together, so as to form two irregular and gloomy squares. That portion of the building which was set apart for state occasions and the vice-regal residence, had undergone so many repairs and modifications, that very little if any of it could have been recognized by its original builder. Not so, however, with other portions of the pile: the ponderous old towers, which have since disappeared, with their narrow loop-holes and iron-studded doors looming darkly over the less ma.s.sive fabrics of the place with stern and gloomy aspect, reminded the pa.s.ser every moment, that the building whose courts he trod was not merely the theatre of stately ceremonies, but a fortress and a prison.