Read Ebook: Lady Kilpatrick by Buchanan Robert Williams

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Ebook has 1162 lines and 42014 words, and 24 pages

'My uncle?' cried Lady Dulcie in a tone of half amaze, half question.

'Your uncle, Lady Dulcie!' answered Blake. ''Tis not in that fashion that a gentleman of my figure behaves to a gentleman of his. 'Tis not at the head of a nobleman that I throw bottles, nor, sor,' he continued to Desmond, as if the interruption had come from him, ''tis not him I'd call a dirty thief nor a filthy reptile, and that I'd have ye to know, sor.'

'You've been quarrelling with somebody at his lordship's table?' said Desmond.

'You had your legs under the mahogany a pretty long time before you found 'twas an insult, from the looks of you,' said Desmond dryly. 'Now, look here, Mr. Blake, 'tis not for a boy of my years to be after offering lessons in politeness to a gentleman of yours, but I'll just ask you to remember that the host whose hospitality you're insulting is this lady's uncle.'

Blake's ferocity vanished with ludicrous suddenness. He began to stammer apologies to Lady Dulcie.

'And that's true, if the devil spoke it,' cried Blake. 'Desmond Macartney, ye're a gentleman. Ye can carry a gentleman's apology to a gentleman without demeaning yourself. Present my apologies to his lordship, and tell him that I'll honour myself by presenting them personally when I hear that he's got rid of his present company.'

''Tis Mr. Feagus, of Ballymote, that you've had the row with?'

'Faith then, it is, and ye can tell him that if he has the spunk to stand up at twenty paces I'll do sufficient violence to my feelings as a gentleman to honour him by lettin' daylight into him.'

'Nonsense, Mr. Blake,' said Desmond. 'Men don't fight duels nowadays.'

'No, by the saints!' cried Blake; 'they stab each other with inky pens, and suck each other dry with lawsuits, by the help of such parchmint-scrapin' vermin as Jack Feagus. 'Tis a dirty world we live in, Desmond, my boy, but sure that's all the more reason that the few decent men should stick together. I'm goin' on to Widdy Daly's shebeen, and if ye're inclined for a drink at the stone cow, I'll be proud of your company.'

'Later, perhaps,' said Desmond. 'I've Lady Dulcie to take care of now, you see.'

'Ah!' said Blake, with a vinous smile at the girl, ''tis the best end of the stick that ye've got hold of, Desmond Macartney. Whisky's a good familiar craythur, but 'tis a mighty poor substitute for the colleens.

Good luck to ye. Lady Dulcie, your obedient servant.'

He swaggered off, his recent anger quite forgotten, and a moment later the quiet evening air rang tunably with a scrap of Irish song:

'And thin he'd reply, with a wink of his eye,

"Arrah! Paddy, now can't ye be aisy

''Tis a beautiful voice,' said Desmond, standing still to listen. ''Twould have been better for poor Blake, maybe, if it hadn't been so fine; it's just been the ruin of him.'

'The horrid old man!' said Dulcie.

'I wonder uncle admits him to his table.'

'Oh, sure, there's no harm in poor Blake!' said Desmond. 'He's nobody's enemy but his own, and there's no better company in Ireland, till he gets too much of the whisky inside him, or sees an attorney.'

'What makes him hate lawyers so?' asked Dulcie.

'Sure he has reason,' returned the boy, who had all an Irishman's apparently innate detestation of law and its exponents. 'He lost one half of his acres in trying to keep the other half, years ago, before you and I were born, and Feagus, who acted for him, played him false. That's the story, at least, and I don't find it hard to believe, for he's an ugly customer, that same Feagus.'

They passed together through the ruined arch, which had been in former times the main point of ingress, through the outer wall of the Castle, the rough and ponderous stones of which had, in these later years of peace, gone to the building of stables, offices, and peasants' cottages. The main building, a huge castellated mansion with an aspect of great age and rugged strength, contrasted strongly in its air of well-kept prosperity with most proprietorial residences in that part of Ireland. Skirting the side of the Castle, they came upon a garden and pleasaunce, bright with flowering plants and emerald turf, commanding a view of the sea, now shining with the glaring tints of sunset, which were reflected too by the bay-windows of the Castle fa?ade.

A heavy-faced, sullen-looking young man, dressed in an ultra-fashionable dress suit, and strangling in a four-inch collar, was sprawling ungracefully on a garden seat with a newspaper on his knees and a cup of coffee on the rustic table at his elbow. He turned at the sound of footsteps on the garden gravel, and seeing Dulcie, rose clumsily to his feet.

'His lordship has been asking for you, Lady Dulcie.'

'Dinner is over, I suppose?' said Dulcie.

'Yes, dinner is over,' said the young man, scowling, 'and so is the fight.'

'We've heard all about the fight from Blake. We met him on the rocks,' said Desmond.

The young man took no heed of the remark, and did not even look at the speaker.

'I'm getting pretty tired of living down here among these savages,' he continued to Lady Dulcie, with an attempt at the accent of a certain type of London men, a drawl which struggled vainly against a pronounced Dublin brogue. 'Bottles flying at people's heads--it isn't my style, you know.'

'Sure,' said Desmond, 'if we're so savage as all that, 'twould be a charity to stop here among us and civilize us. We're willing to learn, Mr. Richard Conseltine, and willing to teach the little we know.'

The young dandy looked at him with a heavy insolence, in which there was a lurking touch of fear, but did not deign to address him.

'His lordship's awf'ly upset. My father's with him, and the doctor's been sent for.'

'I'll go and see him,' said Dulcie.

'Desmond, you might go and ask Mrs. O'Flaherty for some dinner for both of us. I'm as hungry as a hunter.'

'I'll follow you directly,' said Desmond.

'You'll come at once, if you please,' she said, with a pretty imperiousness.

'Come!'

They went away together, young Conseltine following them with a deepening of his usual ill-bred, angry scowl.

'The supercilious brute!' said Desmond under his breath.

'One fight a day is quite enough, Desmond,' whispered Lady Dulcie.

'Quite so,' Dulcie interrupted him quietly. 'I know you'd--and as I don't want you to, you'll just go quietly, and ask to have some dinner laid for us, and keep out of his way for the rest of the evening.'

Four of our leading characters, including our best apology for a hero, have introduced themselves. All that remains to be explained, at least for the present, is that Dulcie Broadhaven, called by courtesy Lady Dulcie, was the youngest daughter of Lord Belmullet, who had married Lord Kilpatrick's only sister and left her a widow with several children and heavily mortgaged estates in county Mayo; and that Dulcie was just then paying one of her annual visits to her uncle's castle in Sligo. Here she had struck up a friendship with young Desmond, who had for years been a sort of prot?g? of Lord Kilpatrick. Only in the wild west of Ireland are such intimacies common or even possible, but there, where the greater and the smaller gentry still meet on terms of free and easy equality, and where the vices of more civilized society are still unknown, they excite no comment.

Conseltine, a dark man of late middle age, with an inscrutable face and a manner of unvarying suavity, poured a bumper of burgundy, and held it out to the angry attorney.

'Drink that, Mr. Feagus. 'Tis a fine cure for anger. Maybe I've not used you so ill as you think. Mr. Peebles,' he continued, 'you had better assist my brother to his room. Pray be calm, my dear Henry. The disturbance is over. If you will permit me, I will do myself the pleasure of looking in on you before retiring.'

His lordship, his face twitching, and his hands tremulous with anger, sat back in his chair, and pettishly brushed the old Scotchman's hand from his shoulder.

'At my table!' he ejaculated angrily, for the sixth time.

'Ay,' said Peebles, with a broad, dogmatic drawl. 'Ye should keep better company. Come awa', my lord, come awa'. Ye'll get nae good by sitting there glowering at folk.'

'Hold your tongue, sir!' snapped the nobleman. 'How dare you address me in that fashion?'

'Come awa', come awa',' repeated Peebles gently, as one speaks to a froward child. 'Ye'll be doing yourself a mischief.'

The old lord rose tremulously, and left the room on his servant's arm. Mr. Conseltine stepped rapidly forward to open the door, and shook his brother's hand as he passed from the room. Then, returning, he addressed Feagus, who was still puffing with anger.

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