Books: My Young Alcides

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides

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"In what character shall you take me?" he asked of Miss Horsman, when
we were going out on the lawn, and it dawned on him that Harry was to
be a Hercules.

"Oh! as Adonis, of course," said Hippo.

"Or Eurystheus," whispered her sister.

Eustace did not understand, and looked pleased, saying something
about a truly classical get up; but Harold muttered to me, "Aren't
they making game of him?"

"They will take care not to vex him," I said.

But Harold could not overlook it, and took a dislike to the Horsmans
on the spot, which all Hippolyta's genuine admiration of him could
not overcome. She knew what the work of his eighteen months in
England had been, and revered him with such enthusiasm for what she
called his magnificent manhood and beneficence, as was ready on the
least encouragement to have become something a good deal warmer; but
whatever she did served to make her distasteful to him. First, she
hastily shuffled over Eustace's portrait, because, as she allowed us
to hear, "he would give her no peace till he was disposed of." And
then she not only tormented her passive victim a good deal in trying
to arrange him as Hercules, but she forgot the woman in the artist,
and tried to make him bare his neck and shoulder in a way that made
him blush while he uttered his emphatic "No, no!" and Baby Jack
supported him by telling her she "would only make a prize-fighter of
him." Moreover, he would have stood more at ease if the whole of
Therford had not been overrun with dogs. He scorned to complain, and
I knew him too well to do so for him; but it was a strain on his
self-command to have them all smelling about his legs, and wanting to
mumble the lion skin, especially Hippo's great bloodhound, Kirby, as
big as a calf, who did once make him start by thrusting his long cold
nose into his hand. Hippo laughed, but Harold could do nothing but
force out a smile.

And I always saw the disgusted and bored expression most prominently
in her performance, which at the best could never have given the
grandeur of the pose she made him take, with the lion skin over his
shoulder, and the arrows and bow in his hand. He muttered that a
rifle would be more rational, and that he could hold it better, but
withdrew the protest when he found that Hippo was ready to implore
him to teach her to shoot with pistol, rifle--anything.

"Your brother can show you. You've only to fire at a mark," was all
that could be got out of him.

Nor would he be entrapped into a beneficent talk. His great talent
for silence served him well, and though I told him afterwards that he
had not done Hippo justice--for she honestly wanted an opening for
being useful--he was not mollified. "I don't like tongue," was all
he further said of her.

But whatever Hippo was, or whatever she did, I shall always be
grateful to her for that photograph.

CHAPTER X. DERMOT'S MARE.

All this time Dermot Tracy had been from home. He had not come back
after the season, but had been staying with friends and going to
various races, in which, as usual, he had heavy stakes. He persuaded
my two nephews to meet him at Doncaster, where he ran one of the
horses bred on his Irish estate, and afterwards to go and make him a
visit at Killy Marey, County Kildare, where he used to stay about
once a year, shooting or hunting, as the season might be, and always
looking after his horses and entertaining all the squires and
squireens of the neighbourhood, and many of the officers from the
Curragh. The benefit of those visits was very doubtful both as to
morals and purses, and Lord Erymanth pointedly said he was sorry when
he heard that Harold and Eustace were of the party.

I do not know whether Lady Diana viewed them as bad companions for
her son, or her son as a bad companion for them; but she was very
severe about it, and when I thought of the hunt dinner at Foling, my
heart sank, even while I was indignant at any notion of distrusting
Harold; and it did indeed seem to me that he had learnt where to look
for strength and self-command, and that he had a real hatred and
contempt of evil. Yet I should have been more entirely happy about
him if he had not still held aloof from all those innermost
ordinances, of which he somehow did not feel the need, or understand
the full drift. Nor would he bow himself to give to any man the
confidence or the influence over him he had given to an incapable
girl like me. And if I should have feared for the best brought up,
most religious of young men, in such scenes as I was told were apt to
take place at Killy Marey, how could I not be anxious for my nephews?
But nothing ever turns out as one expects.

I was at Arked one day, and Lady Diana was telling me of the great
rambling house at Killy Marey, and how, when she arrived as a bride,
none of the doors would shut except two that would not open, behind
one of which lived the family ghost; how the paper hung in festoons
on the walls, and the chairs were of the loveliest primrose-coloured
brocade; and how the green of the meadows was so wonderful, that she
was always remembering it was the Emerald Isle; but how hopeless and
impossible it was to get anything properly done, and how no good
could be done where the Romish priests had interfered. All the old
story of course. In the midst, a telegraph paper was brought to her;
she turned deadly white, and bade me open it, for she could not. I
knew she thought her son had met his father's fate, and expected to
astonish her with the tidings that he was coming home by the next
steamer, or that he had sent some game, or the like. Alas! no; the
mother's foreboding had been too near the truth. The telegram was
from Eustace: "Tracy has had a bad horse accident. The doctor wishes
for you."

There was nothing for it but to speed the mother and daughter on
their hurried start to catch the Holyhead packet and cross that
night. I went home to await in terror and trembling the despatch I
might receive, and to be enlivened by Mrs. Sam Alison's cheering
accounts of all the accidents she could recollect. "Horses are
dangerous creatures to meddle with, and your poor papa never would
let me take the reins when we kept a gig--which was when he was
living, you know, my dear. 'You never can trust their heels,' he
used to say; and it was only last week little Cocker was kicked off,
but that was a donkey, and they were using him shamefully," &c. &c.
&c. I felt as if a swarm of bees were humming in my ears, and walked
about to make the suspense more tolerable, but I absolutely had no
news at all till Viola's letter came. It was a long one, for she
could be of no service as yet, and to write letters was at once her
use and her solace.

Among the horses which Dermot's Irish agent had been buying for
training purposes was a mare, own sister to Harold's hunter--a
splendid creature of three years old, of wonderful beauty, power, and
speed, but with the like indomitable temper. She would suffer no
living thing to approach her but one little stable-boy, and her own
peculiar cat, which slept on her back, and took all sorts of
liberties with her. Her value would be great if she could be
trained, but the training was the problem. Harold, who, partly from
early familiarity, partly from the gentleness of fearless strength,
had a matchless power over horses, had made acquaintance with her one
evening, had been suffered in her box, had fed her, caressed her cat,
and led her round the stable-yard as a first stage in the conquest of
horse by man.

In the early morning, Dermot, quite as fearless, and unwilling that
anyone should do or dare more than himself, had gone alone to make
the same attempt, but no sooner did the mare find him beside her,
than she seized him by the shoulder with her teeth, threw him down,
and kicked and trampled on him. None of the grooms could succeed in
rescuing him, and it was only when Eustace's cry had summoned Harold,
that, grasping the mare's halter and forcing her back with his arm of
iron, he made it possible for Eustace and a groom to drag out poor
Dermot's senseless form, in a state that at first appeared to be
death itself. For several days his condition was so extremely
precarious, that Harold never once left him till his mother arrived,
and even after that was his most effective nurse. He sent me a
message, in Viola's letter, that he had not had a moment to write,
and hoped I had not been too anxious.

After this, Viola wrote every day, and told of gradual improvement
in her brother, and at last how he had been lifted to the sofa, and
mamma hoped in a fortnight or three weeks he might be able to be
taken home. By the next post came a note from Harold, saying he
could be spared, and was coming home, and that very evening he walked
into the house, and was welcomed by Dora with shrieks of ecstatic
joy.

He said Dermot was better, but he looked worn, and had the
indefinable expression of pain which made me sure that something had
gone wrong, and presently I found out that the bite in the shoulder
was a very bad business, still causing much suffering, but that the
most serious matter was, that a kick in the side had renewed the
damage left by the old Alma bullet, and that great care would be
needed all the winter. But Harold seemed more reluctant to open his
mouth than ever, and only, by most diligent pumping, did Mrs. Alison
get out of him what doctors they had called in, and whether they had
used all the recipes for wounds and bruises that she had entrusted to
me to be sent, and which had for the most part remained in my
blotting-book.

The next morning, to my grief and distress, he did not come to my
room, but I found he had been up and out long before it was light,
and he made his appearance at eleven o'clock, saying he had promised
to go and give Lord Erymanth an account of his nephew, and wanted me
to come with him "to do the talking, or he should never stand it."
If I did not object to the dog-cart and Daniel O'Rourke immediately,
we should be there by luncheon time. I objected to nothing that
Harry drove, but all the way to Erymanth not ten words passed, and
those were matters of necessity. I had come to the perception that
when he did not want to speak it was better to let him take his own
time.

Lord Erymanth was anxious, not only about Dermot's health, and his
sister's strength and spirits, but he wanted to hear what Harold
thought of the place and of the tone of the country; and, after our
meal, when he grew more confidential, he elicited short plain answers
full of information in short compass, and not very palatable. The
estate was "not going on well." "Did Harold think well of the
agent?" "He had been spoilt." "How?" "By calls for supplies."
"Were the people attached to Dermot?" "To a certain degree." "Would
it be safe for him to live there?" "He ought."

Lord Erymanth entirely assented to this, and we found that he had all
along held that his sister had been in error for not having remained
at Killy Marey, and brought up her son to his duties as a landlord,
whatever the danger; though of course she, poor thing, could hardly
be expected to see it in that light. He evidently viewed this
absenteeism as the cause of the wreck of Dermot's youth, and those
desultory habits of self-indulgence and dissipation which were
overcoming that which was good and noble in him; and the good old man
showed that he blamed himself for what he had conceded to his sister
in the first shock of her misfortune. Harold had told him of the
warm feeling shown by the tenantry when Dermot was lying in danger of
his life, and their rejoicing when he turned the corner and began to
recover, and he asked anxiously whether all this affection might not
awaken a responsive chord, and draw him to "what was undoubtedly his
proper sphere."

"It will," said Harold.

"You think so? And there is little doubt but that your cousin's
influence at such a critical period may have great effect in turning
the scale?"

Harold nodded.

"More especially as, from the intelligence I have received, I have
little doubt that the connection will be drawn a good deal closer
before long," said Lord Erymanth with a benignant smile at us both.
"I suppose we must not begin to congratulate one another yet, for I
may conclude that nothing had actually taken place when you came
away."

"Nothing."

"When my sister became conscious of the condition of affairs and
wrote to consult me, I had no hesitation in replying that, though
Viola's connections might warrant greater expectations in a worldly
point of view, yet I thought that there was every reason for
promoting an attachment to a gentleman of family equal to her own on
one side at least, and whose noble exertions during the past two
years for the welfare of all concerned with him, not only obliterate
all recollection of past disadvantages, but in every way promise
honour and happiness to all connected with him."

I was not a little excited, but one of the worst fits of restlessness
under Lord Erymanth's harangues had come upon Harold. He only sat it
out by pulling so many hairs out of his beard that they made an
audible frizzle in the fire when he brushed them off his knee, and
stood up, saying gruffly, "You are very good; he deserves it. But I
must get Lucy home in good time. May I go and speak to your
coachman? Tracy gave me a message for him."

Harold was off, and Lord Erymanth observed, "A very fine young man
that. It is much to be regretted that he did not employ the
advantages he enjoyed at Sydney as his cousin Eustace did, and left
himself so rugged and unpolished."

"You must learn to like him, dear Lord Erymanth," I said. "He is all
a very dear brother could be to me."

And allegiance to him kept back every word of that infinite
superiority, which was never more shown than by the opinion of
Eustace, which his great unselfish devotion continued, without the
least deceit, to impress on most people. Lord Erymanth rejoiced, and
we agreed that it was very lucky for me that I preferred Harold,
since I should have had to yield up my possession of Eustace. The
old gentleman was most kind and genial, and much delighted that the
old breach with the Alisons should be healed, and that his niece
should make a marriage which he greatly preferred to her sister's,
and together we sung the praises of our dear Viola, where we had no
difference of opinion.

Harold only came back when the carriage came round, and no sooner had
we driven off than I broke out--"Harry, I had no notion matters had
gone so far. Fancy, Lady Diana consulting her brother! It must be
very near a crisis. I can't think why you did not stay to see it."

"Because I am a fool."

The horse flew on till we were nearly out at the park-gates, and a
bewildered sense of his meaning was coming before me. "You wished
it," said I rather foolishly.

"I did. I do. Only I don't want to see it."

"My poor dear Harold!"

"Pshaw!"--the sound was like a wild beast's, and made the horse
plunge--"I shall get over it."

Then, presently, in a more natural voice, "I must go out again in the
spring. There are things to be looked to at Boola Boola for both of
us. I shall only wait till Tracy is well enough to go with me."

"He! Dermot Tracy?"

"Yes. It will be the best way to break out of the old lines."

"I can fancy that. Oh, Harold! are you going to save him? That will
be the most blessed work of all!" I cried, for somehow a feeling like
an air of hope and joy came over me.

"I don't know about that," said he, in a smothered tone; but it was
getting dark enough to loose his tongue, and when I asked, "Was it
his illness that made him wish it?" he answered, "It was coming
before. Lucy, those horses have done worse for him than that wound
in his shoulder. They had almost eaten the very heart out of him!"

"His substance I know they have," I said; "but not his good warm
heart."

"You would say so if you saw the poor wretches on his property," said
Harold. "The hovels in the Alfy Valley were palaces compared with
the cabins. Such misery I never saw. They say it is better since
the famine. What must it have been then? And he thinking only how
much his agent could squeeze from them!"

I could only say he had been bred up in neglect of them, and to think
them impracticable, priest-ridden traitors and murderers. Yes, Lady
Diana had said some of this to Harold already, It was true that they
had shot Mr. Tracy, but Harold had learnt that after a wild,
reckless, spendthrift youth, he had become a Protestant and a violent
Orangeman in the hottest days of party strife, so that he had
incurred a special hatred, which, as far as Harold could see, was not
extended to the son, little as he did for his tenants but show them
his careless, gracious countenance from time to time.

Yet peril for the sake of duty would, as all saw now, have been far
better for Dermot than the alienation from all such calls in which
his mother had brought him up. When her religious influence failed
with him, there was no other restraint. Since he had left the army,
he had been drawn, by those evil geniuses of his, deep into
speculations in training horses for the turf, and his affairs had
come into a frightful state of entanglement, his venture at Doncaster
had been unsuccessful, and plunged him deeper into his difficulties,
and then (as I came to know) Harold's absolute startled amazement how
any living man could screw and starve men, women, and children for
the sake of horseflesh, and his utter contempt for such diversions as
he had been shown at the races, compared with the pleasure of making
human beings happy and improving one's land, had opened Dermot's eyes
with very few words.

The thought was not new when the danger of death made him look back
on those wasted years; and resolution began with the dawning of
convalescence, that if he could only free himself from his
entanglements--and terrible complications they were--he would begin a
new life, worthy of having been given back to him. In many a
midnight watch he had spoken of these things, and Harold had soothed
him by a promise to use that accountant's head of his in seeing how
to free him as soon as he was well enough. Biston and the horses
would be sold, and he could turn his mind to his Irish tenants, who,
as he already saw, loved him far better than he deserved. He caught
eagerly at the idea of going out to Australia with Harold, and it did
indeed seem that my brave-hearted nephew was effecting a far greater
deliverance for him than that from the teeth and hoofs of wicked
Sheelah.

"But you will not stay, Harold? You will come home?" I said.

"I mean it," he answered.

"Then I don't so much mind," said I, with infinite relief; and he
added, thinking that I wanted further reassurance, that he should
never give up trying to get Prometesky's pardon; and that this was
only a journey for supplies, and to see his old friend, and perhaps
to try whether anything could be done about that other unhappy Harry.
I pressed him to promise me that he would return and settle here, but
though he said he would come back, to settling at home he answered,
"That depends;" and though I could not see, I knew he was biting his
moustache, and guessed, poor dear fellow, that it depended on how far
he should be able to endure the sight of Eustace and Viola married.
I saw now that I had been blind not to perceive before that his heart
had been going out to Viola all this time, while he thought he was
courting her for Eustace, and I also had my thoughts about Viola,
which made it no very great surprise to me, when, in a few days more,
intelligence came that Eustace might be expected at home, and he made
his appearance in a petulant though still conceited mood, that made
me suspect his wooing had not been prosperous, though I knew nothing
till Harold told me that he was not out of heart, though Viola had
cut him short and refused to listen to him, for her mother said she
was a mere child who was taken by surprise, and that if he were
patient and returned to the charge she would know her own mind
better.

Harold was certainly more exhilarated than he chose to avow to
himself on this discovery, and the next week came a letter from Lady
Diana, and a short note from Dermot himself, both saying he had not
been so well, and begging Harold to come and assist in the removal,
since Dermot protested that otherwise he could not bear the journey,
and his mother declared that she should be afraid to think of it for
him.

Viola's hitherto constant correspondence had ceased; I drew my own
auguries, but I had to keep them to myself, for Harold started off
the next day in renewed spirits, and I had Eustace on my hands in a
very strange state, not choosing or deigning to suppose himself
rejected, and yet exceedingly, angry with all young ladies for their
silliness and caprices, while he lauded Lady Diana up to the skies,
and abused Dermot, who, I think, had laughed at him visibly enough to
be at least suspected by himself. And, oddly enough, Dora was
equally cross, and had a fit of untowardness unequalled since the
combats at her first arrival, till I was almost provoked into
acquiescence in Eustace's threat of sending her to school.

The journey was at last accomplished; Harold only parted with the
Tracys at Arked House, after having helped to carry Dermot to the
room that had been prepared for him on the ground-floor.

I rode over the next afternoon to inquire, and was delighted to meet
Viola close within the gate. We sent away my horse, and she drew me
into her favourite path while answering my questions that Dermot had
had a good night and was getting up; I should find him in the
drawing-room if I waited a little while. She could have me all to
herself, for mamma was closeted with Uncle Ery, talking over things--
and on some word or sound of mine betraying that I guessed what
things, it broke out.

"How could you let him do it, Lucy? You, at least, must have known
better."

"My dear, how could I have stopped him, with all St. George's Channel
between us?"

"Well, at any rate, you might persuade them all to have a little
sense, and not treat me as if I was one of the elegant females in
'Pride and Prejudice,' who only refuse for fun! Is not that enough
to drive one frantic, Lucy? Can't you at least persuade the man
himself?"

"Only one person can do that, Viola."

"But I can't! That's the horrid part of it. I can't get rid of it.
Mamma says I am a foolish child. I could tell her of other people
more foolish than I am. I can see the difference between sham and
reality, if they can't."

"I don't think he means to be sham," I rambled into defence of
Eustace.

"Means it! No, he hasn't the sense. I believe he really thinks it
was he who saved Dermot's life as entirely as mamma does."

"No. Now do they really?"

"Of course, as they do with everything. It's always 'The page slew
the boar, the peer had the gloire.'"

"It's the page's own fault," I said. "He only wants the peer to have
the gloire."

"And very disagreeable and deceitful it is of him," cried Viola;
"only he hasn't got a scrap of deceit in him, and that's the reason
he does it so naturally. No, you may tell them that borrowed plumes
won't always serve, and there are things that can't be done by
deputy."

And therewith Viola, perhaps perceiving what she had betrayed, turned
more crimson than ever, and hid her face against me with a sob in her
breath, and then I was quite sure of what I did not dare to express,
further than by saying, while I caressed her, "I believe they
honestly think it is all the same."

"But it isn't," said Viola, recovering, and trying to talk and laugh
off her confusion. "I don't think so, and poor Dermot did not find
it so when the wrong one was left to lift him, and just ran his great
stupid arm into the tenderest place in his side, and always stepped
on all the boards that creak, and upset the table of physic bottles,
and then said it was Harold's way of propping them up! And that's
the creature they expect me to believe in!"

We turned at the moment and saw a handkerchief beckoning to us from
the window; and going in, found Dermot established on a couch under
it, and Harold packing him up in rugs, a sight that amazed both of
us; but Dermot said, "Yes, he treats me like Miss Stympson's dog, you
see. Comes over by stealth when I want him."

Dermot did look very ill and pain-worn, and his left arm lay useless
across him, but there was a kind of light about his eyes that I had
not seen for a long time, as he made Harold set a chair for me close
to him, and he and Viola told the adventures of their journey, with
mirth in their own style, and Harold stood leaning against the
shutter with his look of perfect present content, as if basking in
sunshine while it lasted.

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