"Nor did I say so," interposed Heffernan. "Hear me out: your son is reported to have answered, 'My father's family have been too trained in loyalty, sire, not to give their voice for what they believe the best interests of the empire: your Royal Highness may doubt his judgment, his honor will, I am certain, never be called in question.' The Prince laughed good-naturedly, and said, 'Enough, Darcy,--quite enough; it will give me great satisfaction to think as highly of the father as I do of the son; there is a vacancy on the staff, and I can offer you the post of an extra aide-de-camp.'"

"This is very good news,--the best I 've heard for many a day, Heffernan; and for its accuracy--"

"Lord Castlereagh is the guarantee," added Heffernan, hastily; "I had it from his own lips."

"I 'll wait on him this morning. I can at least express my grat.i.tude for his Royal Highness's kindness to my boy."

"You 'll not have far to go," said Heffernan, smiling.

"How so?--what do you mean?"

"Lord Castlereagh is at the door this moment in that carriage;" and Hefifernan pointed to the chariot which, with its blinds closely drawn, stood before the street door.

The Knight moved hastily towards the door, and then, turning suddenly, burst into a hearty laugh,--a laugh so racy and full of enjoyment that Heffernan himself joined in it, without knowing wherefore.

"You are a clever fellow, Hefifernan!" said the Knight, as he lay back in a deep-cushioned chair, and wiped his eyes, now streaming with tears of laughter,--"a devilish clever fellow! The whole affair reminds me of poor Jack Morris."

"Faith! I don't see your meaning," said Hefifernan, half fearful that all was not right.

"You knew Jack,--we all knew him. Well, poor Morris was going home one night,--from the theatre, I believe it was,--but, just as he reached Ely Place, he saw, by the light of a lamp, a gentlemanlike fellow trying to make out an address on a letter, and endeavoring, as well as he could, to spell out the words by the uncertain light. 'Devilish provoking!'

said the stranger, half aloud; 'I wrote it myself, and yet cannot read a word of it.' 'Can I be of any service?' said Jack. Poor fellow! he was always ready for anything kind or good-natured. 'Thank you,' said the other; 'but I 'm a stranger in Dublin,--only arrived this evening from Liverpool,--and cannot remember the name or the street of my hotel, although I noted both down on this letter.' 'Show it to me,' said Jack, taking the doc.u.ment. But although he held it every way, and tried all manner of guesses, he never could hit on the name the stranger wanted.

'Never mind,' said Jack; 'don't bother yourself about it. Come home with, me and have an oyster,--I 'll give you a bed; 't will be time enough after breakfast to-morrow to hunt out the hotel.' To make short of it, the stranger complied; after all the natural expressions of grat.i.tude and shame, home they went, supped, finished two bottles of claret, and chatted away till past two o'clock. 'You 'd like to get to bed, I see,' said Jack, as the stranger seemed growing somewhat drowsy, and so he rang the bell and ordered the servant to show the gentleman to his room. 'And, Martin,' said he, 'take care that everything is comfortable, and be sure you have a nightcap.' 'Oh! I 've a nightcap myself,' said the stranger, pulling one, neatly folded, out of his coat pocket. 'Have you, by G--d!' said Jack. 'If you have, then, you 'll not sleep here. A man that's so ready for a contingency has generally some hand in contriving it.' And so he put him out of doors, and never saw more of him. Eh, Heffernan, was Jack right?" And again the old man broke into a hearty laugh, in which Heffernan, notwithstanding his discomfiture, could not refrain from partic.i.p.ating.

"Well," said he, as he arose to leave the room, "I feel twenty years younger for that hearty laugh. It reminds me of the jolly days we used to have long ago, with Price G.o.dfrey and Bagenal Daly. By the way, where is Bagenal now, and what is he doing?"

"Pretty much what he always was doing,--mischief and devilment," said the Knight, half angrily.

"Is he still the member for Old-Castle? I forget what fate the pet.i.tion had."

"The fate of the counsel that undertook it is easily remembered," said the Knight. "Bagenal called him out for daring to take such a liberty with a man who had represented the borough for thirty years, and shot him in the hip. 'You shall have a plumper, by Jove,' said Bagenal; and he gave him one. Men grew shy of the case afterwards, and it was dropped, and so Bagenal still represents the place. Good-by, Heffernan; don't forget Jack Morris." And so saying, the Knight took leave of his visitor, and returned to his chair at the breakfast-table.

CHAPTER XI. THE KNIGHT AND HIS AGENT.

The news of Lionel's promotion, and the flattering notice which the Prince had taken of him, made the Knight very indifferent about his heavy loss of the preceding evening. It was, to be sure, an immense sum; but as Gleeson was arranging his affairs, it was only "raising" so much more, and thus preventing the estate from leaving the family. Such was his own very mode of settling the matter in his own mind, nor did he bestow more time on the consideration than enabled him to arrive at this satisfactory conclusion.

If ever there was an agent designed to compensate for the easy, careless habits of such a princ.i.p.al, it was Mr. Gleeson, or, as he was universally known in the world of that day, "Honest Tom Gleeson." In him seemed concentrated all those peculiar gifts which made up the perfect man of business. He was cautious, painstaking, and methodical; of a temper which nothing could ruffle, and with a patience no provocation could exhaust; punctual as a clock, neither precipitate nor dilatory, he appeared prompt to the slow, and seemed almost tardy to the hasty man.

In the management of several large estates--he might have had many more if he would have accepted the charge--Mr. Gleeson had ama.s.sed a considerable fortune; but so devotedly did he attach himself to the interests of his employers, so thoroughly identify their fortunes with his own, that he gave little time to the cares of his immediate property. By his skill and intelligence many country gentlemen had emerged from embarra.s.sments that threatened to engulf their entire fortunes; and his aid in a difficulty was looked upon as a certain guarantee of success. It was not very surprising if a man endowed with qualities like these should have usurped something of ascendency over his employers. To a certain extent their destiny lay in his hands. Of the difficulties by which they were pressed he alone knew either the nature or amount, while by what straits these should be overcome none but himself could offer a suggestion. If in all his dealings the most strict regard to honor was observable, so did he seem also inexhaustible in his contrivances to rescue an embarra.s.sed or enc.u.mbered estate. There was often the greatest difficulty in securing his services, solicitation and interest were even required to engage him; but once retained, he applied his energies to the task, and with such zeal and acuteness that it was said no case, however desperate, had yet failed in his hands.

For several years past he had managed all the Knight's estates; and such was the complication and entanglement of the property, loaded with mortgages and rent-charges, embarra.s.sed with dowries and annuities, that nothing short of his admirable skill could have supported the means of that expensive and wasteful mode of life which the Knight insisted on pursuing, and all restriction on which he deemed unfitting his station.

If Gleeson represented the urgent necessity of retrenchment, the very word was enough to cut short the negotiation; until, at last, the agent was fain to rest content with the fruits of good management, and merely venture from time to time on a cautious suggestion regarding the immense expense of the Knight's household.

With all his guardedness and care, these representations were not always safe; for though the Knight would sometimes meet them with some jocular or witty reply, or some bantering allusion to the agent's taste for money-getting, at other times he would receive the advice with impatience or ill-humor, so that, at last, Gleeson limited all complaints on this score to his letters to Lady Eleanor, with whom he maintained a close and confidential correspondence.

This reserve on Gleeson's part had its effects on the Knight, who felt a proportionate delicacy in avowing any act of extravagance that should demand a fresh call for money, and thus embarra.s.s the negotiation by which the agent was endeavoring to extricate the property.

If Darcy felt the loss of the preceding night, it was far more from the necessity of avowing it to Gleeson than from the amount of the money, considerable as it was; and he, therefore, set out to call upon him, in a frame of mind far less at ease than he desired to persuade himself he enjoyed.

Mr. Gleeson lived about three miles from Dublin, so that the Knight had abundant time to meditate as he went along, and think over the interview that awaited him. His revery was only broken by a sudden change from the high-road to the noiseless quiet of the neat avenue which led up to the house.

Mr. Gleeson's abode had been an ancient manor-house in the Gwynne family, a building of such antiquity as to date from the time of the Knights Templars; and though once a favored residence of the Darcys, had, from the circ.u.mstances of a dreadful crime committed beneath its roof,--the murder of a servant by his master,--been at first deserted, and subsequently utterly neglected by the owners, so that at last it fell into ruin and decay. The roof was partly fallen in, the windows shattered and broken, the rich ceilings rotten and discolored with damp; it presented an aspect of desolation, when Mr. Gleeson proposed to take it on lease. Nor was the ruin only within doors, but without; the ornamental planting had been torn up, or used as firewood; the gardens pillaged and overrun with cattle; and the large trees--among which were some rare and remarkable ones--were lopped and torn by the country people, who trespa.s.sed and committed their depredations without fear or impediment. Now, however, the whole aspect was changed; the same spirit of order that exercised its happy influence in the management of distant properties had arrested the progress of destruction here, and, happily, in sufficient time to preserve some of the features which, in days past, had made this the most beautiful seat in the county.

It was not without a feeling of astonishment that the Knight surveyed the change. An interval of twelve years--for such had been the length of time since he was last there--had worked magic in all around. Clumps had sprung up into ornamental groups, saplings become graceful trees, sickly evergreens that leaned their frail stems against a stake were now richly leaved hollies or fragrant laurustinas; and the marshy pond, that seemed stagnant with rank gra.s.s and duckweed, was a clear lake fed by a silvery cascade which descended in quaint but graceful terraces from the very end of the neat lawn.

In Darcy's eyes, the only fault was the excessive neatness perceptible in everything; the very gravel seemed to shine with a peculiar l.u.s.tre, the alleys were swept clean, not even a withered leaf was suffered to disfigure them, while the shrubs had an air of trim propriety, like the self-satisfied air of a Sunday citizen.

The brilliant l.u.s.tre of the heavy bra.s.s knocker, the white and spotless flags of the stone hall, and the immaculate accuracy of the staid footman who opened the door, were types of the prevailing tastes and habits of the proprietor. A mere glance at the orderly arrangement of Mr. Gleeson's study would have confirmed the impression of his strict notions and regularity of discipline: not a book was out of place; the boxes, labelled with high and t.i.tled names, were ranged with a drill-like precision upon the shelves; the very letters that lay in the baskets beside the table fell with an attention to staid decorum becoming the rigid habits of the place.

The Knight had some minutes to bestow in contemplation of these objects before Gleeson entered; he had only that morning arrived from a distant journey, and was dressing when the Knight was announced. With a bland, soft manner, and an air compounded of diffidence and self-importance, Mr. Gleeson made his approaches.

"You have antic.i.p.ated me, sir," said he, placing a chair for the Knight; "I had ordered the carriage to call upon you. May I beg you to excuse the question, but my anxiety will not permit me to defer it: there is no truth, or very little, I trust, in the paragraph I 've just read in Carrick's paper--"

"About a party at piquet with Lord Drogheda?" interrupted Darcy.

"The same."

"Every word of it correct, Gleeson," said the Knight, who, notwithstanding the occasion, could not control the temptation to laugh at the terrified expression of the agent's face.

"But surely the sum was exaggerated; the paper says, the lands and demesne of Ballydermot, with the house, furniture, plate, wine, equipage, garden utensils--"

"I 'm not sure that we mentioned the watering-pots," said Darcy, smiling; "but the wine hogsheads are certainly included."

"A rental of clear three thousand four hundred and seventy-eight pounds, odd shillings, on a lease of lives renewable forever--pepercorn fine!"

exclaimed Gleeson, closing his eyes, and folding his hands upon his breast, like a martyr resigning himself to the torture.

"So much for going on spades without the head of the suit!" observed the Knight; "and yet any man might have made the same blunder; and then, Heffernan, with his interruption,--altogether, Gleeson, the whole was mismanaged sadly."

"The greater, part of the land t.i.the free," moaned Gleeson to himself; "it was a grant from the Crown to your ancestor, Everard Darcy."

"If it was the king gave it, Gleeson, it was the queen lost it."

"The lands of Corrabeg, Dunragheedaghan, and Muscarooney, let at fifteen shillings an acre, with a right to cut turf on the Derryslattery bog! not to speak of Knocksadowd! lost, and no redemption!"

"Yes, Gleeson, that's the point I'm coming to; there is a proviso in favor of redemption, whenever your grief will permit you to hear it."

Gleeson gave a brief cough, blew his nose with considerable energy, and with an air of submissive sorrow apologized for yielding to his feelings. "I have been so many years, sir, the guardian--if I may so say--of that property that I cannot think of being severed from its interests without deep, very deep, regret."

"By Jove! Gleeson, so do I! you have no monopoly of the sorrow, believe me. I acknowledge, readily, the full extent of my culpability. This foolish bet came to pa.s.s at a dinner at Hutchison's,--it was the crowning point of a bragging conversation about play,--and Drogheda, it seems, booked it, though I totally forgot all about it. I'm certain he never intended to push the wager on me, but when reminded of it, of course I had nothing else for it but to express my readiness to meet him. I must say he behaved n.o.bly all through; and even when Heffer-nan's stupid interruption had somewhat ruffled my nerves, he begged I would reconsider the card--he saw I had made a mistake--very handsome that!--his backers, I a.s.sure you, did not seem as much disposed to extend the courtesy. I relieved their minds, however, I stood by my play, and--"

"And lost an estate of three thousand--"

"Quite correct; I'm sure no man knows the rental better. And now, let us see how to keep it in the family."

The stare of amazement with which Gleeson heard these words might have met a proposition far more extravagant still, and he repeated the speech to himself, as if weighing every syllable in a balance.

"Yes, Gleeson, that was exactly what I said; now that we are engaged in liquidating, let us proceed with the good work. If I have given you enlarged occasion for the exercise of your abilities, I 'm only acting like Peter Henessy,--old Peter, that held the mill at Brown's Barn."