Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James

‘m sure that the converse of the proposition must have its penalty, too; for if not, I should have been a marvellously clever fellow. – Ay, Miss Polly, my life has been all play.”

      “A greater fault than the other, sir, and with this addition, too, that it makes proselytes,” said she, gravely; “my father’s theory finds fewer followers.”

      “And you not one of them?” said MacNaghten, rapidly; while he fixed a look of shrewd inquiry on her.

      “Assuredly not,” replied she, in a calm and collected tone.

      “By Jove, I could have sworn to it,” cried he, with a burst of enthusiastic delight. “There, Fagan, you see Miss Polly takes my side, after all.”

      “I have not said so,” rejoined she, gravely. “Gain and waste are nearer relatives than they suspect.”

      “I must own that I have never known but one of the family,” said Dan, with one of those hearty laughs which seemed to reconcile him to any turn of fortune.

      Fagan all this time was ill at ease and uncomfortable; the topic annoyed him, and he gladly took occasion to change it by an allusion to the wine.

      “And yet there are people who will tell you not to drink champagne for breakfast,” exclaimed Dan, draining his glass as he spoke; “as if any man could be other than better with this glorious tipple. Miss Polly, your good health, though it seems superfluous to wish you anything.”

      She bowed half coldly to the compliment, and Fagan added hurriedly, “We are at least contented with our lot in life, Mr. MacNaghten.”

      “Egad, I should think you were, Tony, and no great merit in the resignation, after all. Put yourself in my position, however, – fancy yourself Dan MacNaghten for one brief twenty-four hours. Think of a fellow who began the world – ay, and that not so very long ago either – with something over five thousand a-year, and a good large sum in bank, and who now, as he sits here, only spends five shillings when he writes his name on a stamp; who once had houses and hounds and horses, but who now sits in the rumble, and rides a borrowed hack. If you want to make a virtue of your contentment, Fagan, change places with me.”

      “But would you take mine, Mr. MacNaghten? Would you toil, and slave, and fag, – would you shut out the sun, that your daily labor should have no suggestive temptings to enjoyment, – would you satisfy yourself that the world should be to you one everlasting struggle, till at last the very capacity to feel it otherwise was lost to you forever?”

      “That’s more than I am able to picture to myself,” said MacNaghten, sipping his wine. “I ‘ve lain in a ditch for two hours with a broken thigh-bone, thinking all the time of the jolly things I ‘d do when I ‘d get well again; I ‘ve spent some very rainy weeks in a debtor’s prison, weaving innumerable enjoyments for the days when I should be at liberty; so that as to any conception of a period when I should not be able to be happy, it ‘s clean and clear beyond me.”

      Polly’s eyes were fixed on him as he spoke, and while their expression was almost severe, the heightened color of her cheeks showed that she listened to him with a sense of pleasure.

      “I suppose it’s in the family,” continued Dan, gayly. “My poor father used to say that no men have such excellent digestion as those that have nothing to eat.”

      “And has it never occurred to you, sir,” said Polly, with a degree of earnestness in her voice and manner, – “has it never occurred to you that this same buoyant temperament could be turned to other and better account than mere “ – she stopped, and blushed, and then, as if by an effort, went on – “mere selfish enjoyment? Do you not feel that he who can reckon on such resources but applies them to base uses when he condescends to make them the accessories of his pleasures? Is there nothing within your heart to whisper that a nature such as this was given for higher and nobler purposes; and that he who has the spirit to confront real danger should not sit down contented with a mere indifference to shame?”

      “Polly, Polly!” cried her father, alike overwhelmed by the boldness and the severity of her speech.

      “By Jove, the young lady has given me a canter,” cried MacNaghten, who, in spite of all his good temper, grew crimson; “and I only wish the lesson had come earlier. Yes, Miss Polly,” added he, in a voice of more feeling, “it ‘s too late now.”

      “You must forgive my daughter, Mr. MacNaghten, – she is not usually so presumptuous,” said Fagan, rising from the table, while he darted a reproving glance towards Polly; “besides, we are encroaching most unfairly on your time.”

      “Are you so?” cried Dan, laughing. “I never heard it called mine before! Why, Tony, it’s yours, and everybody’s that has need of it. But if you ‘ll not eat more, let me show you the grounds. They are too extensive for a walk, Miss Polly, so, with your leave, we ‘ll have something to drive; meanwhile I’ll tell the gardener to pluck you some flowers.”

      Fagan waited till MacNaghten was out of hearing, and then turned angrily towards his daughter.

      “You have given him a sorry specimen of your breeding, Polly; I thought, indeed, you would have known better.”

      “You forget already, then, the speech with which he accosted us,” said she, haughtily; “but my memory is better, sir.”

      “His courtesy might have effaced the recollection, I think,” said Fagan, testily.

      “His courtesy! Has he not told you himself that every gift he possesses is but an emanation of his selfishness? The man who can be anything so easily, will be nothing if it cost a sacrifice.”

      “I don’t care what he is,” said Fagan, in a low, distinct voice, as though he wanted every word to be heard attentively. “For what he has been, and what he will be, I care just as little. It is where he moves, and lives, and exerts influence, – these are what concern me.”

      “Are the chance glimpses that we catch of that high world so attractive, father?” said she, in an accent of almost imploring eagerness. “Do they, indeed, requite us for the cost we pay for them? When we leave the vulgar circle of our equals, is it to hear of generous actions, exalted sentiments, high-souled motives; or is it not to find every vice that stains the low pampered up into greater infamy amongst the noble?”

      “This is romance and folly, girl. Who ever dreamed it should be otherwise? Nature stamped no nobility on gold, nor made copper plebeian. This has been the work of men; and so of the distinctions among themselves, and it will not do for us to dispute the ordinance. Station is power, wealth is power; he who has neither, is but a slave; he who has both, may be all that he would be!”

      A sudden gesture to enforce caution followed these words; and at the same time MacNaghten’s merry voice was heard, singing as he came along, —

      “‘Kneel down there, and say a prayer,

      Before my hounds shall eat you.’

      ‘I have no prayer,’ the Fox replied,

      ‘For I was bred a Quaker.’

      “All right, Miss Polly. Out of compliment to you, I suppose, Kitty Dwyer, that would never suffer a collar over her head for the last six weeks, has consented to be harnessed as gently as a lamb; and my own namesake, ‘Dan the Smasher,’ has been traced up, without as much as one strap broken. They ‘re a little pair I have been breaking in for Carew; for he’s intolerably lazy, and expects to find his nags trained to perfection. Look at them, how they come along, – no bearing reins, no blinkers. That ‘s what I call a very neat turn-out.”

      The praise was, assuredly, not unmerited, as two highbred black ponies swept past with a beautiful phaeton, and drew up at the door of the conservatory.

      The restless eyes, the wide-spread nostrils and quivering flanks of the animals, not less than the noiseless caution of the grooms at their heads, showed that their education had not yet been completed; and so Fagan remarked at once.

      “They look rakish, – there’s no denying it!” said Mac-Naghten; “but they are gentleness itself. The only difficulty is