Repton, however, did not retire to bed at once; his mind was still intent upon the subject which had engaged him during the day, and as he walked to and fro in his room, he still dwelt upon it. Scanlan's instructions had led him to believe that the Martins were in this case to have been "put upon their t.i.tle;" and the formidable array of counsel employed by Magennis seemed to favor the impression. Now it was true that a trifling informality in the service of the writ had quashed the proceedings for the present; but the question remained, "Was the great struggle only reserved for a future day?"

It was clear that a man embarra.s.sed as was Magennis could never have retained that strong bar of eminent lawyers. From what fund, then, came these resources? Was there a combination at work? And if so, to what end, and with what object?

The crafty old lawyer pondered long and patiently over these things.

His feelings might not inaptly be compared to those of a commandant of a garrison, who sees his stronghold menaced by an enemy he had never suspected. Confident as he is in the resources of his position, he yet cannot resist the impression that the very threat of attack has been prompted by some weakness of which he is unaware.

"To put us on our t.i.tle," said he, "implies a great war. Let us try and find out who and what are they who presume to declare it!"

CHAPTER XV. A FIRST BRIEF

The reader has been already told that Joe Nelligan had achieved a great success in his first case. A disputed point of law had been raised, in itself insignificant, but involving in its train a vast variety of momentous interests. Repton, with an ingenuity all his own, had contrived to draw the discussion beyond its original limits, that he might entangle and embarra.s.s the ambitious junior who had dared to confute him. Nelligan accepted the challenge at once, and after a stormy discussion of some hours came out the victor. For a while his timid manner, and an overpowering sense of the great odds against him, seemed to weigh oppressively on him. The very successes he had won elsewhere were really so many disparagements to him now, giving promise, as it were, of his ability. But, despite all these disadvantages, he entered the lists manfully and courageously.

What a many-sided virtue is this same courage, and how p.r.o.ne is the world to award its praises unequally for it! We are enthusiastic for the gallant soldier the earliest in the breach, or the glorious sailor who first jumps upon the enemy's quarter-deck, and yet we never dream of investing with heroism him who dares to combat with the most powerful intellects of debate, or enters the field of argument against minds stored with vast resources of knowledge, and practised in all the subtleties of disputation.

It is time, existence is not in the issue; but are there not things a thousand times dearer than life at peril? Think of him who has gone on from success to success; whose school triumphs have but heralded the riper glories of college life; who, rising with each new victory, is hailed by that dearest and best of all testimonies,--the prideful enthusiasm of his own age. Fancy him, the victor in every struggle, who has carried all before him,--the vaunted chief of his contemporaries,--fancy him beaten and worsted on his first real field of action. Imagine such a man, with all the prestige of his college fame, rudely encountered and overcome in the contest of public life, and say if any death ever equalled the suffering!

Happily, our task has not to record any such failure in the present case. Young Nelligan sat down amidst the buzzing sound of approving voices, and received a warm eulogy from the Court on the promise of so conspicuous an opening. And a proud man was Dan Nelligan on that day!

At any other time how deeply honored had he felt by the distinguished notice of the great dignitaries who now congratulated him on his son's success! With what pride had he accepted the polite recognition of Chief Barons and silk-gowned "leaders"! Now, however, his heart had but room for one thought,--Joe himself,--his own boy,--the little child as it were of yesterday, now a man of mark and note, already stamped with the impress of success in what, to every Irishman's heart at least, is the first of all professions. The High Sheriff shook old Nelligan's hand in open court, and said, "It is an honor to our county, Nelligan, to claim him." The Judge sent a message that he wished to see him in his robing-room, and spoke his warm praises of the "admirable speech, as remarkable for its legal soundness as for its eloquence;" and Repton overtook him in the street, and, catching his hand, said, "Be proud of him, sir, for we are all proud of him."

Mayhap the hope is not a too ambitious one, that some one of those who may glance over these humble lines may himself have once stood in the position of Joe Nelligan, in so far as regards the hour of his triumph, and have felt in his heart the ecstasy of covering with his fame the "dear head" of a father.

If so, I ask him boldly,--whatever may have been the high rewards of his later fire, whatever honors may have been showered upon him, however great his career, and however brilliant its recognitions,--has he ever, in his proudest moments, tasted such a glorious thrill of delight as when he has fallen into his father's arms overcome by the happiness that he has made that father proud of him? Oh, ye who have experienced this thrill of joy within you, cherish and preserve it. The most glowing eulogies of eloquence, the most ornate paragraphs of a flattering press, are sorry things in comparison to it. For ourselves, we had rather have been Joe Nelligan when, with his father's warm tears dimming his eyes, he said, "G.o.d bless you, my boy!" than have gained all the honors that even talents like his can command!

He could not bear to absent himself from home that day; and although his father would gladly have celebrated his triumph by gathering his friends about him, Joe entreated that they might be alone. And they were so. The great excitement of the day over, a sense of weariness, almost sadness, stole over the young man; and while his father continued to relate for his mother's hearing various little incidents of the trial, he listened with a half-apathetic dreaminess, as though the theme oppressed him. The old man dwelt with delight on the flattering attention bestowed by the Court on Joseph's address, the signs of concurrence vouchsafed from time to time by the Bench, the approving murmur of the Bar while he spoke, and then the honest outburst of enthusiasm that shook the very walls as he concluded. "I tried," continued Dan Nelligan,--"I tried to force my way through the crowd, and come and tell you that he had gained the day, but I couldn't; they were all around me, shaking my hands, patting me on the shoulders, and saying, as if I did n't know it in my own heart, 'He 'll make you a proud man yet, Mr. Nelligan.'"

"I heard it all, five minutes after it was over," said Mrs. Nelligan; "and you 'd never guess who told me."

"Counsellor Walsh," cried Nelligan.

"No, indeed; I never seen him."

"It was Hosey Lynch, then, for I saw him running like mad through the town, spreading the news everywhere."

"It was not Hosey," said she, half contemptuously. "I wish, Joe, you'd give a guess yourself who told me."

"Guess, mother,--guess who told you what?" said he, suddenly starting from some deep meditation.

"Who told me that you won the cause, and beat all the great counsellors from Dublin."

"I'm sure, mother, it would be hard for me to say," said Joseph, smiling faintly; "some of our kind townsfolk, perhaps. Father Neal, old Peter Hayes, or--"

"I'll just tell you at once," broke she in, half irritated at the suggested source of her information. "It was Miss Mary herself, and no other."

"Miss Martin!" exclaimed old Nelligan.

"Miss Mary Martin!" echoed Joe; while a sickly paleness crept over his features, and his lips trembled as he spoke.

"How came you to see her? Where was she?" asked Nelligan, eagerly.

"I 'll tell you," replied she, with all the methodical preparation by which she heralded in the least important communications,--"I 'll tell you. I was sitting here, working at the window, and wondering when the trial would be over, for the goose that was for dinner was too near the fire, and I said to myself--"

"Never mind what you said to yourself,--confound the goose," broke in old Dan, fiercely.

"Faith, then, I 'd like to know if you 'd be pleased to eat your dinner on the cold loin of veal--"

"But Miss Martin, mother,--Miss Martin," urged Joe, impatiently.

"I'm coming to her, if you'll let me; but when you flurry me and frighten me, I 'm ready to faint. It was last Candlemas you gave me a start, Dan, about--what was it, now? Lucky Mason's dog, I believe. No, it was the chimney took fire--"

"Will you just go back to Miss Martin, if you please," said old Nelligan, sternly.

"I wish I knew where I was,--what I was saying last," said she, in a tone of deep sorrow and contrition.

"You were going to say how Miss Mary told you all about the trial, mother," said Joe, taking her hand kindly within his own.

"Yes, darling; now I remember it all. I was sitting here at the window hemming them handkerchiefs of yours, and I heard a sharp sound of a horse coming along quick, and, by the way he cantered, I said to myself, 'I know _you_,' and, sure enough, when I opened the window, there she was, Miss Mary herself, all dripping with wet, and her hat flattened on her face, at the door.

"'Don't ask me to get down, Mrs. Nelligan,' said she, 'for I'm in a great hurry. I have to ride out to Kilkieran with this'--and she showed me a bottle she had in the pocket of her saddle. 'I only called to tell you that your son has gained another--' What was it she called it?--a victory, or a battle,--no, it was something else--"

"Never mind--go on," cried Joe; "and then?"

"'But, my dear Miss Mary,' says I, 'you 're wet through and through.

It's more than your life's worth to go off now another ten miles. I'll send our gossoon, Mickey Slater, with the medicine, if you 'll just come in and stay with us.' I did n't say to dinner, for I was ashamed to ask her to that.

"'I should be delighted, Mrs. Nelligan,' said she, 'but it is impossible to-day. I 'd have stayed and asked you for my dinner,'--her very words,--'asked you for my dinner, but I have promised poor Mat Landy to go back to him. But perhaps it is as well as it is; and my aunt Dorothy might say, if she heard of it, that it was a strange choice I had made of a festive occasion,--the day on which we were beaten, and the society of him that worsted us.'

"'Oh, but, Miss Mary,' says I, 'sure you don't think the worse of poor Joe--'

"'I never thought more highly of him, my dear Mrs. Nelligan,' said she, 'than at this moment; and, whatever others may say or think, I'll maintain my opinion, that he is a credit to us all. Good-bye! good-bye!'

and then she turned short round, and said, 'I can't answer for how my uncle may feel about what has occurred to-day, but you know _my_ sentiments. Farewell!' And with that she was off; indeed, before I had time to shut down the window, she was out of sight and away."

"She ought to know, and she will know, that Joe never said one hard thing of her family. And though he had in his brief enough to tempt him to bring the Martins up for judgment, not a word, not a syllable did he utter." This old Nelligan spoke with a proud consciousness of his son's honorable conduct.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Joe, "is it not enough that a man sells his intellect, p.a.w.ns his capacity, and makes traffic of his brains, without being called on to market his very nature, and set up his very emotions for sale? If my calling demands this at my hands, I have done with it,--I renounce it."

"But I said you refrained, Joe. I remarked that you would not suffer the heat of discussion to draw you into an angry attack--"

"And you praise me for it!" broke in Joe, pa.s.sionately. "You deem it an occasion to compliment me, that, in defending the cause of a worthless debauchee, I did not seize with avidity the happy moment to a.s.sail an honorable gentleman; and not alone you, but a dozen others, congratulated me on this reserve,--this constraint,--as though the lawyer were but a bravo, and, his stiletto once paid for, he must produce the body of his victim. I regard my profession in another and a higher light; but if even its practice were the n.o.blest that could engage human faculties, and its rewards the highest that could crown them, I'd quit it tomorrow, were its price to be the sacrifice of an honorable self-esteem and the regard of--of those we care for." And in the difficult utterance of the last words his cheek became crimson, and his lip trembled.

"I 'll tell you what you 'll do, Joe," said his mother, whose kindness was not invariably distinguished by tact,--"just come over with _me_ to-morrow to Cro' Martin. I 'm going to get slips of the oak-leaf geranium and the dwarf rose, and we 'll just go together in a friendly way, and when we 're there you 'll have some opportunity or other to tell Miss Mary that it wasn't your fault for being against them."

"He 'll do no such thing," broke in Nelligan, fiercely. "Miss Mary Martin wants no apologies,--her family have no right to any. Joe is a member of a high and powerful profession. If he does n't fill as great a place now, who knows where he 'll not be this day fifteen years, eh, my boy? Maybe I 'll not be here to see,--indeed, it's more than likely I 'll not,--but I know it now. I feel as sure of it as I do that my name 's Dan."

"And if you are not to see it, father," said Joe, as he pressed his father's hand between both his own,--"you and my dearest mother,--the prize will be nigh valueless. If I cannot, when my reward is won, come home,--to such a home as this,--the victory will be too late." And so saying he rose abruptly, and hurried from the room. The moment after he had locked his door, and, flinging himself upon his bed, buried his face between his hands.

With all the proud sensations of having achieved a great success, his heart was heavily oppressed. It seemed to him as though Destiny had decreed that his duty should ever place him in antagonism to his affections. Up to a short period before this trial came on he had frequently been in Miss Martin's company. Now, it was some trifling message for his mother; now, some book he had himself promised to fetch her; then visits to the sick--and Joe, latterly, had taken a most benevolent turn--had constantly brought them together; and often, when Mary was on foot, Joe had accompanied her to the gates of the demesne.