The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 4 November 1920, Page 3

The Storyteller

WHEN WE WERE BOYS (By William O’Brien.) - - CHAPTER IX.—HARRY DOES NOT x JOIN THE MINISTRY. Lord -Drumshauglin ’ s first exhibition of feeling, upon learning that his eldest son was in London, was to tear his hair and to trample his skull-cap under his feet, and to do this with an oath, although it was his daughter who broke the newshe who would once have flung down his cloak -at a street crossing to enable a woman to step over dry. “The villain! the blackguard! the cursed fool!” he cried, stamping about the room, and dragging at his side-locks with murderous effect. “Send him up here, if he’s sober. I’ll horsewhip him, I’ll No, don’t send him up. I am not equal to these scenes, Mabel. You ought to know it. But who cares whether I am or not? O-oh!” So, upon second thoughts, Lord Drumshaughlin sank querulously down into his arm-chair (arm-chairs, moral or material, were the end of all his outbreaks of energy) half persuading himself that the gout was again grinding his toe-joint. It was his favorite illusion that, when he wanted to be selfish, he was only ill. In support of this theorem, as well as because they .were pretty, he loved to make a show of his thin white hands, which were transparent enough to display an interesting tracery of pale blue veins. He who, given a chivalrous purpose and an inspiring love; might have earned a name to quicken men’s blood, had sunk into the mean-spirited truant who shirks standing up to fight by shamming sickness. His being an invalid did not altogether remove the difficulty, it is true; but it was somebody else’s business to look to it, as it was to give him his medicine. “Your mother does not know anything about this, child ?” he asked, after a moment or two furtively. Nobody could tell why; but Drumshaughlin, one of the boldest men alive, was suspected of being afraid of his wife. What was certain was that, after years of sordid bickerings, which rubbed off all the bloom of his homage to women, and left his daughter the only being of her sex who shone in his eyes with any light of holiness, he and his wife settled into a perfectly respectable agreemet to differ, on the terms of Lady Drumshaughlin going her own way to a secure station in society, uuhaunted by sinister recollections of the Vallinzona, and her husband being left unmolested in that soft, sensuous, semi-detached-bachelor club life, which had come to be the only Paradise his outworn faiths could promise him. He hated trouble even more than he loved himself, if the two sentiments were not really one; he was an Ethelred sunk into the habit of buying off invaders at any price from his Castle of Indolence; and an indispensable item in the Danegelt exacted by Lady Drumshaughlin was that Harry should be ruled out of sight "Slid mind. “No; we have not told mamma.” “Humph, that’s right,” he said, lolling placidly back. He still felt a guilty necessity for maintaining a decent show of discomfort by twisting himself impatiently about in his chair, as one struggling with moral and physical agony, until he could feel Mabel’s rosy fingers straying caressingly through his hair, when he could no longer refuse -to surrender himself to the luxury of being perfectly" at his ease. This was not quite what Mabel Westropp wanted. “Poor Harry!” she murmured, half unconsciously. “Yes, yes—Mabel, I request you will not be making" these worrying observations. You know he has behaved badly, and there’s an end of it.” There was not an end of it, however, for, wholly oblivious of the

respect due to the gout, he started to his feet," and strutted nervously about the -.room, ‘muttering , as 1 if to himself, “Poor Harry!-quite truepoor beggar!” The last bright trace of what f Ralph Westropp might have been was that it invariably cost him more discomfort to shirk a duty' than it would cost a resolute man to perform it. " Suddenly he stopped, with his ears erect. “That’s Plynlymmon’s step. Come along. Don’t be all day about it. Come along there, will you?” he cried unceremoniously, flinging open the door just as his visitor had his hand upon the handle. “Well, wellwhat news from - the Secretary?” Captain Plynlymmon was one of those correctlygroomed, elderly-juvenile men, of station and domestic circumstances almost as undecided as their age, who are as plentiful in fashionable London club-rooms as stays. He came over, so to say, with the Conqueror, in the remote .age, when he served as best man at the weddings of the papas of various young men among his present familiars at the Chrysanthemum. All that the new generation could tell of him was that he was a younger son, who came in with a whiff of ancient Devonshire respectability; that he was popular with all men, like a cigar after dinner, and with some women who had not sons in danger of baccarat ; that he made upon the whole a creditable appearance in a club window, with his two-shilling hot-house flower in his buttonhole, his easy carriage, Rule Britannia moustache, and tailoring tastes of ancient lineage; that, if he gave no dinners, he ate them in the proper spirit, and frequently had his name inserted before the etcetera in the lists of dinner-parties in considerable houses that, in short, he was neither better nor worse than the thousand-and-one “general utility men” whom society uses as it uses its easy chairs—sometimes to fill a corner, sometimes to be sat upon, never in the way, and always decently upholstered. Lord Drumshaughlin sometimes sat upon his easy chairs without any regard for the furniture. A less experienced worldling than Plynlymmon would have resented the rude, mastiff-like shake of the shoulder with which he repeated: - “Well, well—what news?” Plynlymmon’s face remained perfectly cloudless as, in place of replying, he glided quietly towards Miss Westropp and made the obeisances of an old-fashioned gallant. “Sorry to find the gout has been at you again, old man,” he then remarked, with a commiserating nod. °

"Gout! Rubbish! Did you do anything with the Secretary?"

"Anything? Everything, thou most breaknecked of a steeplechasing nation," smiled Plynlymmon, who knew of old that to give him a yard of his way was to get a mile of his own. "He has fixed halfpast one, at the Irish Office, to see you."

"Plynlymmon, I am vastly obliged to you," he said,, shaking the other's hand with the benignity of a monarch distributing largess. "Egad, that was. a capital thought of mine— will come off famously. Let me see. It's just half-past twelve. Mabel, tell that boy to put on his hat and step down with me to Queen Anne's Gate." Lord Drumshaughlin* could fight a battle as gaily as most generals if somebody would only take the drudgery off his hands. He could especially remember-himself in the Gazette. "I am afraid it is not so smooth sailing as you imagine," gently interposed Captain Plynlymmon, who could not see his own name erased from the Gazette without some soreness. If the truth must be told, he, too, had no more to do with winning the battle, than the young gentleman who brushed , the Commander-in-Chief's uniform had to do with winning the battle of Waterloo, the battle having been -really ' fought and won over an afternoon cup of Lady Asphodel's tea; but, inasmuch as he was aware that the Marchioness's subtle strategy was a bit of a humbug in its —Lord Drumshaughlin's incurable, sloth having subjected him to all sorts of torturing obligations for an interview for which he had only to name

his hour, if he * had taken the business" into" his own hands—Plynlymmon had his feelings about;this;, roughriding way. of appropriating his share of the stars and ribbon. ''For instance, I have some reason to anticipate that so far J- as i that English peerage is concerned " ? ©'!'l-j|'. ;

"Eh? what the devil do you know about an English peerage?" " " • 1

"Only that you told me not later than yesterday that;; life was not worth "living ; with an Irish one," was the cool reply. "' "Did; I?" cried Lord Drumshaughlin, laughing good-humoredly. .; "It's quite true, though. I'd willingly let them shoot Lord Drmshaughlin, if they'd leave plain Ralph Westropp. An Irish peer is like an Irish diamond—well enough in its mountains, but of neither use nor ornament in a jeweller's shop." "But a Representative Peer is a different thing, and as you happen to be first favorite for election in eld Clancurran's place, I am afraid it will require some very judicious handling, indeed, if we are to suggest anything in the shape of a British peerage at this moment," said Plynlymmon, with a statesmanlike carriage of the head. "My dear fellow, I don't care a pinch of snuit for a British peerage," cried the other gaily; "not just at this moment, anyhow. All I want is something—devil may care what—for Harry " "For ?"

"For Harry—my son, Harry." "Not going to throw up the Guards, eh?'-' "Was never in them," gruffly muttered Lord Drumshaughlin, who 'was even testier in answering questions than in putting them. ° "Ah! I did not know," said Plynlymmon vaguely. He stood arranging his cravat, which was of a subdued blue, by the cloudy -old mirror over the fireplace ; puzzled by this apparition of Harry in a household whose every garret he thought he had explored and, like all men who subsist on tittle-tattle, piqued by a good mystery as by a good dinner. "Well, well, old fellow, mind your play with the Chief Secretary," he said, not yet satisfied that he had quite asserted the dignity of diplomacy, and gently toying with the feathers of a parting shaft, "Just take two tips from me—never try to bring Jelliland to the point, and don't swear. There, there— you know there's no man relishes better than I do a good round English-bot-tomed oath of the Spanish Main—it emphasises a good thing, as a salute of 21 guns does Royalty—always thought it was a mistake that swearing should go out with duelling and the prize-ring-—they may come in again—but " warned by v -a flashlight from Lord Drumshaughlin's eye—"but Jelliland is a prig, and a Puritan, and that kind of thing—thinks anybody who talks better than himself is talking blasphemy, don't you see By-bye!" And Captain Plynlymmon walked through an airy minuet out of the room, thinking to himself: "Who the dickens is Harrv?"

The Chief Secretary rose from his desk, without quitting his ground, to give Lord Drumshaughlin a courteous little bob and a well-considered little shakehands, just cordial enough to abdicate any assumption of superiority, coming from a commoner to a peer from whom he wanted something, »even from a Cabinet Minister to an Irish peer (for John Jelliland was a humble man), and yet stingy enough to intimate distantly that haucVshakinig was : a commodity which, like • decorations, a -Minister could - distribute but sparingly. , They were the days in which Cab ; net Ministers were still joint-stock kings, who had simply divided up the Crown jewels amongst them.

"One moment, my lordjust a line or two," he said, waving the father and soil towards a couple of old-fashioned, stiff-backed chairs, as uncomfortable as a pair of public stocks, and taking up is" quill pen again in ■> a thoughtful sort of way.

Z *■ -■ -• -5 'J% T£J[ ; Tr-'t Is it altogether, too horrible to harbor a suspicion “ that, if you could - have looked] over his ‘ shoulder, " r 'you would- have found the Secretary simply scribbling, “Your , obedient . servant, John Jelliland,” in a ; great variety of styles? Ministers ; have been known to do such things, even as a great physician lingers over a Latin. prescription of ipecacuanha, which he is copying solemnly into his diary, .when- the succeeding patient - enters the room. They say j. it is found useful in overawing patients and' place-hunters, with reflections how much more weighty ' business" this 1 great throbbing ; world has on its mind than their own liver symptoms or; views', upon a clerkship in ( the Excise. John Jelli- ■: land was driven almost by a law of nature to innocent expedients of this kind, as stumpy women are driven to increase their height by wearing dresses striped perpendicularly rather than horizontally. He was a bald, quick, live, round-headed little gentleman, whom it took all the energies of a pair of active, decisive eyes, and all the majesty shed over his proceedings from a lofty bumpy brow, to save from the impression that he, was perpetually standing on his toes to redeem the insignificance of his inches. r : V ■ While the Secretary went on with his Work of signing majestic sheets of foolscap the same autographs or death warrants— a sense of painful responsibility, until his visitors should be reduced to a proper temperature below blood-heat—a Danish dachshund, with dreamy eyes and proudly aristocratic head, that was taking its siesta on the hearthrug, was, by some secret affinity which dog-fanciers alone could exactly account for, attracted to Harry Westropp’s side. The animal rubbed its proud snout conciliatingly against Harry’s legs, and submitted approvingly while that young gentleman, with much interest, took its jaws between his hands and examined its gums, and took 1 u ky the • nape of the neck and shook it; to all of which indignities the hound responded with a gently wagging tail and a look of respectful homage, such as a successful author called before the curtain bestows on a discriminating public. “Down, Halmar, down !” cried the Minister, in the tone of one with whom it was a grievance to’ be compelled to repeat a single word. • never saw that breed before,” remarked Harry genially “but it’s a beautiful little bitch—our red setters arn’t in it with her.” The Secretary darted his keen eyes at the speaker a if he had unexpectedly developed a second head. He withdrew them instantly—a busy man could only afford a moment’s glance at the portent— remarking, Ah!” and summoning the dachshund 7 peremptorily to his side. " ~4. Id ,P^ e a 1 hatful of sovereigns for a pup out of that one, struck in Harry again, with whom Halmar. was still carrying on a distant flirtation from behind ner master s chair. The Secretary glanced up again with a little frown of surprise; then, for fear of further inroads on the Sob 7 ° f i l 6 plaC6 ’ l Urnedl off a last autograph and, having sealed up what he had been writin S n^+W Cl l Care f S T ed a lok ° f entle weariness n order that he might the more gracefully shake it off as he rose with a smile and- cried, “My dear lord I’m dam S^lr~?° U knW how % is with us, slaves of the lamp—l hope your patience "is not tired as my pen. This isahem?” ,■ ;. J Mr T^fi SO j’ said I Lord Drumshaughlin ; whereupon of the ! H S'? ° f a finger to the a <Wer of the little bitch, who had not noticed ter master dachshi nd W ’ and I P ldl y made U P his mind that the was the more attractive acquaintance of the (To be continued.) • : .