Richard Dowling

O'Brien was struck dumb. "Mrs. Davenport," he thought, in a dazed, unbelieving way--"Mrs. Davenport at Kilcash! It can't be possible. There is some mistake." Here was a complication on which he had never counted--which it would have been idle to anticipate. The position in which he found himself was perplexing, absurd. It was useless to hope any longer that Alfred was not desperately in love with this woman, who had recently been the central figure in a most notorious and unpleasant inquiry. Alfred had seen her only a few times, and could not have exchanged a word with her since that awful night. It was absurd.

"Mrs. Davenport," said Jerry, slowly, "had, I thought, gone away by this time. How do you know she is in Ireland, or on her way there? Who told you?"

Alfred smiled and sat down.

"A friend found it out for me. She did go to France for a week, but she came back the day before yesterday, and is in Ireland now. I am most anxious to see her again. Poor woman!--she must have suffered horribly."

He had observed a look of anxiety, if not disapproval, on Jerry's face, and tried to make it seem as though he took no more than a friendly interest in the widow.

"Alfred," said Jerry, slowly and seriously, "it won't do. I can see you are hard hit."

"Nonsense!" cried Alfred, gaily.

Jerry directed the conversation far afield from the subject to which Alfred would willingly have confined it.

But Alfred was not to be baffled or denied. The moment a pause occurred he broke in with:

"Jerry, you have not told me yet whether we shall start for Ireland tomorrow or not?"

"Alfred, have you ever been in love?"

"Never!"--with a laugh, a slight increase of colour, and a dull, dim kind of pride in some feeling he had, he knew not what--a feeling of comfort and exaltation.

"Because, you know, it's an awfully stupid and miserable feeling. It's not good enough to cry over or to curse over. Sighing is despicable."

"How on earth do you know anything about it, Jerry? I thought you were a woman-hater."

"Ay," said Jerry, vaguely. "Do you know of all people in the world whom I should most like to be?"

"No."

"One of Shakespeare's clowns. What digestions these clowns had! They are the only perfect all-round men I know. Mind you, they are no more fools than they choose to be. If they pleased, they could all be Chief Justices, or Archbishops, or Fishery Commissioners, or anything else fearfully intellectual they liked; but they preferred to be clowns, and kept their superb digestions, and made jokes at lovers and such-like human rubbish. Motley's the only wear."

"What on earth is the matter with you, Jerry? I never knew until now that you had a leaning towards poetry!" Alfred was gratified to find O'Brien thus bordering on the sentimental. He would have embraced with delight any chance of breaking into the most extravagant sentimentality himself. To think of O'Brien countenancing sentiment was too delicious. He added: "I don't know much about Shakespeare; but, for my part, I think his fools are awful fools."

"Why, Alfred--why?"

"Because they are so desperately wise."

"Ay," said O'Brien, in a still more desponding tone. "A fool must be a fool indeed when he chooses to be wise.

"'Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness!--serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?'"

"No," answered Alfred: "I don't see anything to laugh at. That seems a very wise speech. Is it spoken by a fool?"

"By an amateur fool, and a bad amateur fool, too. It is one of the silliest speeches in all Shakespeare. Whenever Shakespeare wanted to have a little sneer up his sleeve, and to his own self, he put the thing in rhyming couplets. Nearly all his rhyming couplets are jokes for his own delight, and for the vexation and contempt of all other men. Shakespeare did penance for his sins in his puns, and revenged his injuries on mankind in his rhyming couplets.... That's your mother's voice."

"Yes," said Alfred, going to the door and opening it, "that's my mother and the girls. Come here, mother; here's Jerry O'Brien."

"Your mother and my girl," said Jerry, down low in his heart. "'Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is.' Romeo is the most contemptible figure in all history, and Juliet the most adorable." Aloud he said at that moment: "And you, Miss Paulton--how are you?"

"Quite well, thank you."

"What a low blackguard," he thought, "Shakespeare was to kill Juliet! But he killed Romeo, too, and that may have justified him in the eyes of heaven. I'd forgive him even his rhyming couplets if he'd only turn his tragic attention to those accursed Commissioners. Just fancy a lot of apoplectic fools, bursting, so to speak, with the want of knowledge of anything, and standing between that darling and me! May the maledictions of----" To Madge he said aloud, in answer to her question: "Yes, I had a very good passage across--not a ripple on the water. You have never been across?"

"No, never. I should very much like to go," she said, as she sat down on a chair, adjusted her mantle, and looked up in his face.

"Oh, you ought to go over," he said; "the scenery is romantic."

He thought "romantic" might be too strong for Mrs. Paulton, so he added hastily:

"And the garden produce--owing," he added, in explanation, "to the humidity of the climate."

He felt rather foolish, and that he had been saying very foolish things. But then he didn't care. He did not want to shine before her: she was the beacon of his hope.

"Perhaps," she said, looking up, "father might take us over next summer, or the summer after."

She looked up in his face again. It was desperately provoking.

"Or the summer after," thought Jerry, with a pang. "Does that girl sitting there, three feet away from me, and who doesn't think I care for her a bit, imagine for a moment that I am going to let her wander about all the earth with that respectable old gentleman, her father, till the crack of doom? Nonsense! She isn't a bit good-looking," he thought, looking down into her eyes, and when she lowered her eyes, gazing devoutly at her hat--"she isn't a bit good-looking--not half as good-looking as Edith, and Edith is no beauty. But still, I think, I'd feel excellently comfortable if the others would go away, and I might put my arm round her and try to persuade her that she was happy because I did so."

"You find Alfred almost quite well again?" asked Mrs. Paulton genially of Jerry.

"Oh, yes. He is almost as well as ever, and of course will be better than ever in a little while."

"A few whiffs of sea air will put me on my legs once more," said Alfred, with abounding cheerfulness. "I feel as if the very look of the sea would set me all right."

"You unfortunate devil!" thought Jerry. "Are you so bad as that? Oh, for the mind of one of those plaguey clowns! Falstaff was the only man who ever enjoyed life thoroughly--Falstaff and Raffaelle. What was the burden of flesh carried by Falstaff compared to this 'feather of lead!' What were all the jealousies which surrounded Raffaelle's career compared to my jealousy of the hat that touches her hair, or the glove that touches her cheek!"

"You will of course stay with us while you are in London," said Mrs. Paulton. "I told Alfred to be sure to say that we insisted upon your doing so, and the silly boy forgot it."

"Oh, he'll stay, mother," answered Alfred. "He'll stay with us while he's in London."

The invalid gave a glance at Jerry. The latter understood it to be an appeal for a very brief respite indeed from travelling. Jerry was in no small difficulty as to what he should say or how he should act. He would like to stop at Carlingford House a month, a year. Even a month was out of the question. But it was too bad that Alfred should be in such a violent hurry to go away. He believed Madge's brother had no suspicion that Madge was particularly dear to him. Still, common hospitality would scarcely allow a man to hurry a guest away from under his own roof after twenty-four hours' stay, particularly when that friend had come several hundred miles to do his host a good turn. No, hospitality would not allow a man to do it, but love would. He, Jerry, could not plead fatigue. That would be grotesque in a healthy young man. He would not lie and say he had business in London which would keep him a few days there, and yet it was shameful and ridiculous that after a whole month of separation he should be obliged to fly from her almost before he had time to get accustomed to the music of her voice. What delicious music it did make in his hungry ears! He would ask Alfred, without any explanation, if the day after to-morrow would not suit him quite as well as tomorrow.

He made a sign to Alfred, and the two young men passed through the folding doors into the front drawing-room. Here a bright fire burned. Alfred went to the fire--Jerry to the window. The latter looked out, started, and said slowly:

"Alfred, there's a visitor coming up the garden."

"All right," said Alfred without interest.

"And it's a woman."

"All right."

"And it's Mrs. Davenport."

"What!"

In a second Alfred was by Jerry's side.

Jerry laughed softly.

"All right?" he repeated in an interrogative voice.

Alfred's face blazed, but he did not speak or move.