The woman who accompanied them we need not describe, having already made the reader acquainted with her in the person of the female fortune-teller, who held the mysterious dialogue with Sir Thomas Gourlay on his way to Lord Cullamore's.
“This liquor,” said the schoolmaster, “would be nothing the worse of a little daicent mellowness and flavor; but, at the same time, we must admit that, though sadly deficient in a spirit of exhilaration, it bears a harmonious reference to the beautiful beef and cabbage which we got for dinner. The whole of them are what I designate as sorry specimens of metropolitan luxury. May I never translate a classic, but I fear I shall soon wax aegrotat—I feel something like a telegraphic despatch commencing between my head and my stomach; and how the communication may terminate, whether peaceably or otherwise, would require, O divine Jacinta! your tripodial powers or prophecy to predict. The whiskey, in whatever shape or under whatever disguise you take it, is richly worthy of all condemnation.”
“I will drink no more of it, uncle,” replied the other man; “it would soon sicken me, too. This shan't pass; it's gross imposition—and that is a bad thing to practise in this world. Ginty, touch the bell, will you?—we will make them get us better.”
A smile of a peculiar nature passed over the woman's ghastly features as she looked with significant caution at her brother, for such he was.
“Yes, do get better whiskey,” she said; “it's too bad that we should make my uncle sick from mere kindness.”
“I cannot exactly say that I am much out of order as yet,” replied the schoolmaster, “but, as they say, if the weather has not broken, the sky is getting troubled; I hope it is only a false, alarm, and may pass away without infliction. If there is any of the minor miseries of life more trying than another, it is to drink liquor that fires the blood, splits the head, but basely declines to elevate and rejoice the heart. O, divine poteen! immortal essence of the hordeum beatum!—which is translated holy barley—what drink, liquor, or refreshment can be placed, without the commission of something like small sacrilege, in parallel with thee! When I think of thy soothing and gradually exhilarating influence, of the genial spirit of love and friendship which, owing to thee, warms the heart of man, and not unfrequently of the softer sex also; when I reflect upon the cheerful light which thou diffusest by gentle degrees throughout the soul, filling it with generosity, kindness, and courage, enabling it to forget care and calamity, and all the various ills that flesh is heir to; when I remember too that thou dost so frequently aid the inspiration of the bard, the eloquence of the orator, and changest the modesty of the diffident lover into that easy and becoming assurance which is so grateful to women, is it any wonder I should feel how utterly incapable I am, without thy own assistance, to expound thy eulogium as I ought! Hand that tumbler here, Charley—bad as it is, there is no use, as the proverb says, in laving one's liquor behind them. We will presently correct it with better drink.”
Charley Corbet, for such was the name of the worthy schoolmaster's nephew, laughed heartily at the eloquence of his uncle, who, he could perceive, had been tampering a little with something stronger than water in the course of the evening.
“What can keep this boy.” exclaimed Ginty; “he knew we were waiting for him, and he ought to be here now.”
“The youth will come,” said the schoolmaster, “and a hospitable youth he is—me ipso teste, as I myself can bear witness. I was in his apartments in the Collegium Sanctae Trinitatis, as they say, which means the blessed union of dulness, laziness, and wealth, for which the same divine establishment has gained an appropriate and just celebrity—I say I was in his apartments, where I found himself and a few of his brother students engaged in the agreeable relaxation of taking a hair of the same dog that bit them, after a liberal compotation on the preceding night. Third place, as a scholar! Well! who may he thank for that, I interrogate. Not one Denis O'Donegan!—O no; the said Denis is an ignoramus, and knows nothing of the classics. Well, be it so. All I say is, that I wish I had one classical lick at their provost, I would let him know what the master of a plantation seminary (*—a periphrasis for hedge-school) could do when brought to the larned scratch?”
“How does Tom look, uncle.” asked Corbet; “we can't say that he has shown much affection for his friends since he went to college.”
“How could you expect it, Charley, my worthy nepos.” said the schoolmaster—“These sprigs of classicality, when once they get under the wing of the collegium aforesaid, which, like a comfortable, well-feathered old bird of the stubble, warms them into what is ten times better than celebrity—videlicet, snug and independent dulness—these sprigs, I say, especially, when their parents or instructors happen to be poor, fight shy of the frieze and caubeen at home, and avoid the risk of resuscitating old associations. Tom, Charley looks—at least he did when I saw him to-day—very like a lad who is more studious of the bottle than the book; but I will not prejudge the youth, for I remember what he was while under my tuition. If he be as cunning now and assiduous in the prosecution of letters as I found him—if he be as cunning, as ripe at fiction, and of as unembarrassed brow as he was in his schoolboy career, he will either hang, on the one side, or rise to become lord chancellor or a bishop on the other.”
“He will be neither the one nor the other then,” said the prophetess, “but something better both for himself and his friends.”
“Is this by way of the oracular, Ginty?”
“You may take it so if you like,” replied the female.
“And does the learned page of futurity present nothing in the shape of a certain wooden engine, to which is attached a dangling rope, in association with the youth? for in my mind his merits are as likely to elevate him to the one as to the other. However, don't look like the pythoness in her fury, Ginty; a joke is a joke; and here's that he may be whatever you wish him! Ay, by the bones of Maro, this liquor is pleasant discussion!” We may observe here that they had been already furnished with a better description of drink—“But with regard to the youth in question, there is one thing puzzles me, oh, most prophetical niece, and that is, that you should take it into your head to effect an impossibility, in other words, to make a gentleman of him; ex quovis ligno nonfit Mercurius, is a good ould proverb.”
“That is but natural in her, uncle,” replied Corbet, “if you knew everything; but for the present you can't; nobody knows who he is, and that is a secret that must be kept.”
“Why,” replied the pedagogue, “is he not a slip from the Black Baronet, and are not you, Ginty——?”
“Whether the child you speak of,” she replied, “is living or dead is what nobody knows.”
“There is one thing I know,” said Corbet, “and that is, that I could scald the heart and soul in the Black Baronet's body by one word's speaking, if I wished; only the time is not yet come; but it will come, and that soon, I hope.”
“Take care, Charley,” replied the master; “no violation of sacred ties. Is not the said Baronet your foster-brother?”
“He remembered no such ties when he brought shame and disgrace on our family,” replied Corbet, with a look of such hatred and malignity as could rarely be seen on a human countenance.
“Then why did you live with him, and remain in his confidence so long,” asked his uncle.
“I had my own reasons for that—may be they will be known soon, and may be they will never be known,” replied his nephew—“Whisht! there's a foot on the stairs,” he added; “it's this youth, I'm thinking.”
Almost immediately a young man, in a college-gown and cap, entered, the room, apparently the worse for liquor, and approaching the schoolmaster, who sat next him, slapped his shoulder, exclaiming:
“Well, my jolly