The Faded Poppy. A fragment of Philistine melodrama

Chapter I

"Rome was at the show, People climbed up the columns, fought for spikes O' the chapel-rail to perch themselves upon, — Women were fainting, no few fights ensued ; In short, it was a show repaid your pains.' The Ring and the Book. A nation touchingly loyal. We have it on the highest, in short, royal authority, which may reasonably be credited with a measure of critical acumen concerning this trait of our modern democracy. Pressing, pushing, elbowing, execrating, onward marches the British Zacchæus, even though he may not have the plea of Zacchæan stature. Till at length he has reached the desired goal ; say, one of the trees new-planted at the Corner, hard by the Wellington statue. Cunningly setting a walking-stick against it, he'll mount thereon, supporting himself by cbnging to the meagre branches.

A royal pageant is to pass ; and to him, as to the buzzing human hive below, royalty is mostly but a name, something his eyes have never actually looked on. To see somewhat of the picturesque, time-honoured, gorgeous-tinted thing said to lurk still behind the sombre machinery of law court, town-council, board of guardians, the old-world in stitution of Kings and Queens amidst the new-fangled democracy, the living sea of surging humanity may, should occasion arise, trample each man his fellow-unit under foot. A people loyal and devoted ! These weary A waiters, stand they never so long on aching tiptoe, will catch at best but the merest glimpse of royalty's trappings. And a marriage procession ! The public is ever loyal to this ; it owns an interest altogether unique, independent of regal splendour.

More particularly with that larger section of the nation, ungallantly reputed to push hardest in a crowd, deal the cruellest elbow-thrusts to an inter posing unit, faint likewise on occasion (so the stout police man affirms) for the chance of a removal to the purer air of the front row of spectators. A marriage, in short, is always interesting. Humble pageant as this one is, the village Zacchæus has climbed into a fragment of ruined tower — trees there are none in the wind-swept desolation of the unkempt churchyard — to view it from aloft. " Murder alive ! " he shouts. It is his custom so to do, whether on the occasion of a funeral, marriage, or con firmation procession, using the phrase as a preamble to a critical remark on its character, varied only with " Man alive ! " when he desires to bring to the notice of one of the officials certain details which strike him as illogical.

When, standing at the open grave, the white -robed clergyman pronounces in solemn tones, " I heard a voice from heaven," this Zacchæus has been known to in terpose, " Man alive ! I am higher than you, and I didn't hear it." But now it was " Murder alive ! " and the subject of his comments is to be the bridegroom, whose unique bearing as he leaves the church robs the ragged onlooker of further speech. Desiring to investigate the matter more closely, he turns to descend. Cautiously, for the old stonework is shaky in this wind. Bridegrooms he has seen many a score, but never one like unto this. He is bent on in specting the wedded pair seated in the bridal coach. There are no blinds there for tremulous, newly-wedded hands to pull down ; intimate acquaintance with the old yellow post-shay of the village inn, which has taken away brides more than he could count, makes him confident of that.

Brides have their duties to the sight-seeing public. In this instance, the bridegroom. In that unusuafcircum stance lies the special interest of this spectacle, lending pressing, crowding, buzzing enthusiasm to the growing multitude. For he is not of the traditional order, rejoicing or to rejoice over his fair young bride, careless of the blindless windows that flaunt these first moments of married bliss in the eyes of the curious. In Shrouebeg, a glimpse at these was regarded as a perquisite of the outside world, a form of legitimized compensation for the fact of its bleak outsidedness. No closed carriages ! The vfllage public were as exacting on this point as other publics of larger dimensions. But now the supreme moment has arrived, the wedded pair are seated. " How does he look ? " The unspoken query in every mind.

" How handsome he is ! " gasps a young lady spectator, her voice touched with the suspicion of a suppressed sob. " Far and away the genteelest-looking young man I ever saw," responded a less emotional sister ; " he might be a duke or a — don't they say he is a lord's son ? " " He reminds me so, doesn't he you, Letty, of that picture in the Macnamaras' hall of Napoleon after the battle of Waterloo ? " " Nonsense, child ! Napoleon had no moustache, and this man's is the nicest thing about him, just the sort I admire most. I wonder now if I couldn't get Ernest to trim his in the same way. But — I say, doesn't he look sad? Now, if you ask me," and the lady glanced at the wedding ring on her finger, "I shouldn't wonder if he cut his throat to-night. I shouldn't indeed ; or, perhaps — (starting at a sudden noise) is that a pistol going off?"

Turning to something the colour of the httle pocket handkerchief fluttering in the neighbourhood of her eyes, the unmarried sister gave a slight shriek, and putting her fingers in her ears and shutting her eyes, exclaimed, " How dreadful ! Do tell me, Letty, has he shot himself ? " " Don't make such a show of yourself, silly ! Can't you hear it is only the old brass cannon at Duggan Castle going off ? There it is again ! I do believe they are firing minute guns, just as if Polly were a princess ! The impudence of those Duggans ! and they scarcely in society. People Ernest wouldn't let me call upon ! " " How pale he is," said the other, timidly opening her eyes to see the coach still tarrying at the churchyard gate, the postillion knowing his public duties too well to speed the parting couple ; " and he is like Napoleon, I tell you.

Look at that deep wrinkle on his forehead ! It makes me feel as if I would like to die for him," and a tear sprang anew into the liquid girl eye as she made a slight forward movement, as though to throw herself under the feet of the four lean chestnut screws harnessed to the old coach, now shaking impatiently their winkerless heads, with a view to getting rid of the streaming wedding-favours attached to them. Armed with the weight of her matronhood, Letty linked her arm securely in that of this silly young thing, as she delivered a consolatory reversal of her former dictum. " I don't believe he'll shoot himself after all, or cut his throat either ; he knows better than that. There — be a good girl ! And don't you see for yourself it serves the military right to get caught sometimes, they run away with the hearts of so many girls ? silly ones, of course ; (nevertheless, matron as she was, Letty heaved a retro spective sigh) besides, he may be very handsome and genteel and all that, but what a fool he must be to let himself be hooked by Polly and that old spider of a father of hers !

Minute-guns indeed ! (as a discordant quaver rose again above the howling of the wind) I'd like to minute gun the whole blessed — there ! don't let people see you cry— I tell you he won't shoot himself, though he may run off, get himself ordered abroad, as those officers can always manage to do, and leave Polly a grass-widow on her father's hands. Wouldn't that be fun ? only think — " But bent on the duty of letting no detail of the spectacle escape her, she rivets her eyes once more on the centre of attraction. The men have begun to chuckle, as men will on witness ing the public downfall of a formidable rival. Notably one, of the village-solicitor type, who has edged himself close up to the sisters, is regarding the elder with eyes of com placent possession. Presently to whisper in her ear some jocular confidence which the younger is not to hear.

So softly, she does not catch it at first. When she does, she makes a show of boxing his ears, giving vent to a series of disconnected sentences. " Of course there won't be, how could there ? He'll be off before the day is out, mark my words. But see ! they are pelting them with shoes. Stupid of us not to have thought of bringing rice ! no nice people throw slippers now. Just think of old Duggan's ignorance not to know that ! But how can you expect to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear ? " At last, with a final rattle of rusty pole-chain and an exultant whinny of one of the horses at having got rid of his wedding-favour, the old coach is off. The mystic honeymoon privacy has at length settled down on the couple ; the spectacle now is resolved into marking the postillion dodging his head hither and thither to avoid a stray shoe, as he whips up the lean flanks of the galloping chestnuts.

The excitement of some of the onlookers has risen to fever-heat. " I cannot help it, I cannot indeed," sobs one — she who had detected the Napoleonic brow-wrinkle in the bride groom ; " he is so handsome ! I believe it will kill me. Let me go, Letty." " Where ? " asked her sister anxiously, still keeping hold of her arm. " Home — anywhere. Perhaps I'll find something to distract me ; those eyes of his haunt me — so large and deep and blue ? Did you ever see such beautiful eyes ? And don't you feel inclined to envy Polly Duggan — you are quite sure she was beside him, Letty ? You see, I had my eyes shut most of the time." " Quite sure. That's right enough," answered her brother in-law, a twinkle in his nondescript eye ; " but I shouldn't wish myself in her place, if I were you, Maggie ; would you, Letty ?

A fellow like that might make it uncommonly unpleasant for her," and the twinkle grew to a knowing chuckle. " Not I," responded his spouse fervently ; " but let's get out of this low crowd ; what a noise they are making ! And what's this ? Actually taking off their boots to fling at the old shay ! " Which was indeed the form in which the excitement of the emotional crowd was venting itself. The clerk himself, who had answered the responses at the recent ceremony, and had since been giving various prosessional experiences of his concerning brides willing and unwilling he had seen led to the " Himalayan altar," having given a final tug to one of his hob-nailed boots, is now holding it aloft in the act of aiming for the roof of the bridal coach. " S'pose you've insured your old hoof-pad ? " remarks his neighbour ; " maybe the bride might take a fancy to it, if it gets in at the window !

" " And stick to it too," added another ; " they're a screwy lot, every mother's son of them Duggans." " It's I that don't begrudge the pair of them to them that is newly made man and wife in the face of Holy Church and this congregation," responded the clerk, in the plenitude of his generous enthusiasm, quickly divesting himself of the other boot also. Not a moment to lose, the chestnuts are now taking in good form a sharp turn of the road. Right, left, he flings the heavy boots. One is seen to alight on the coach's roof, the other has also found its mark. It hits the near wheeler, which is seen to make a frantic bound forward, dislocating the whole team before the horses are finally pulled up. The postillion dismounts. A situation rich and rare ! The thrilling first moments of the honeymoon privacy may be thus early scanned !

A universal buzz, a rush in the direction of the coach. Passes from mouth to mouth the breathless news that one of the crazy traces has given way. More, that it may take half-an-hour to repair the damage, no rope being at hand. The postillion winks knowingly as he remarks that he knew better than to provide himself with any, it not being the first time in his experience that the traces of the old shay have broken or been cut, the bride taking the opportune moment to — and he nods towards the line of distant hill. His pipe being now in his mouth, dumb show is his most ready mode of im parting his views. He looks round in search of a light. " Cut and run," interprets he who presents the friendly match ; " but it's not she who'd do it this time." So deep seated the popular instinct, that here the bridegroom is the centre of interest.

" Eight you are ! she'll stick to him till the breath is out of his body, and after. There is great cutting up in him ; they say he's a lord's son, and you'd know it for sure and certain if you heard his gintale English accent. Great cutting up," he reiterated ; " them Englishmen have a power of money, robbed from poor ould Ireland But he'll be cleverer than he looks if he cuts his stick now," pointing to the fact of the crowd having frustrated all possibdity of this, mounting the very doorstep on either side, to see what might be seen of this novel and interesting spectacle. " Poor devil !" mutters involuntarily the husband of the young married lady ; " I'd pity him if I didn't hate the whole blessed lot of them. Letty, you come here." He had suddenly remembered the claims of his wife to the most excellent point of view he had secured, viz., the right-hand doorstep of the old coach, the side on which sat the bridegroom.

He loyally prepares to descend, only carefully seeing to it that no one else jumps into the post he is vacating. " Oh, do let me go first ! " implores his sister-in-law. In the thrill of the moment she has wiped her eyes, and is now standing on tiptoe craning her pretty little head, with the poor result of seeing the top of the bridegroom's hat. "You won't mind letting me, Letty — just for a moment — I'll let you up directly. But no — I cannot," and she has bowed her face in her hands ; " it would kill me, I feel as if it would. Anyway, those eyes will haunt me to my dying day." " If you're not going to get up, let me, or the place will be taken by some one else," exclaimed Letty impatiently, turning then to harangue the crowd on their rudeness in pushing so hard. " That step's my husband's, he got it first," she remarks with cold dignity to a lady eagerly rushing forward ; " and he has given it to me, and my sister is to have it next, and then my husband may like to have another look.

I can't say for certain. At all events we shall require the place for quite ten minutes. And then my mother may come, and of course we would give her the precedence over people who are no relations, and " but something that meets her eyes inside the coach seems, through its all-absorbing interest, to quench further speech. An unwilling bridegroom, agony hopeless and helpless written on every line of face and gesture. A triumphant bride, his senior, infinite determination, with boundless reserves of resource and nerve to carry out to its bitter end a fixed purpose, depicted on hers. A spectacle truly worth taking some trouble to see. Letty gluts her eye to the full, as does the lady mounted on the opposite door-step. Only once the former turns, it is to say petulantly, " Don't push so ; you nearly had me off with that stick of yours."

" It's not pushing she is, mind you, Bill, with those elbows of hers," remarks the ragged youth so addressed; " maybe shoving is the gintale word for it ; we don't mind being gintale too," and shoulder to shoulder the two lads bore with their united weights against the lower portion of the body of the elevated sightseer. " This is too much ! " she exclaimed, after a vain effort to keep her feet ; " the insolence and independence of the lower order are getting beyond bearing, and no wonder, with such a government as we have " But the elo quence of the fair politician (even girls are politicians here, and every detail of life has its political side) is cut short by the necessity of taking a flying leap to save herself from being pushed down. She alights near the postillion, whose pipe is now in a comfortable glow.

No way impatient for the arrival of the rope, he leans against the crossbar from which the broken trace is hanging, cracking jokes with the crowd, as, holding up the boot which has wrought this entertainment, he invites its owner to toss for it. The bride, suddenly struck with the suspicion that the full measure of public interest due to a newly-made wife is not being accorded to her — taking for her text this little fracas, inquires out of what penny book they (glancing the while at her old rival, Letty Chute) can have learned their manners. "Set a beggar on horseback indeed!" begins Letty, growing red with mortification. But words fail her to continue the quotation, she can only lay hold of the spousal arm, as she pours into the ear a highly coloured account of the insult to which she has been subjected, requesting her husband, as her lawful protector, to seek reparation.

" There, there, my pet," he responds soothingly, going on to suggest the same impossibility to which she had recently alluded, of making a silken purse out of a swinish material. " That's all right, dry your eyes ; you see it wouldn't do for me to call her out, which I should if she were a man. I would horsewhip him within an inch of his life — not all the red coats under the sun would save him." This last he added with a touch of personal acrimony. "I said you would knock him down," sobbed Letty sympathetically; "any man would, when his wife was insulted." " He has been trying it on too, has he ? Here, let go my arm, and I'll go for him this minute." " No — please not — he said nothing ; that is " But here a diversion occurred. A new-comer, before whom the crowd instinctively gives way, rushes towards the coach as something in which he has a distinct pro perty.

It is the bride's father, and he carries a stout thorn stick. " What is it at all, me dorling ? " he asks, making his way to the bride's side of the coach. " A broken trace, and no rope to be had for love or money, though I told them we'd pay five pounds down to the first man who brought it." " It's I that'd like to see the colour of it, and I'd get her enough rope and welcome to hang the British consti tootion, if I had to skin my ould grannie for it. What say, Pat ? " put in one of the roughs. "That the skin'd be all you'd get out of the bargain " " You confounded rascal ! " interrupted the indignant father, addressing the postillion, hastily stuffing his pipe, lighted as it was, into his pocket ; " do you know who it is you are driving ? Me daughter, I tell you, and on her wedding-day !

Her that might have had a prince of the blood royal, but is taking instead a gallant young officer in the most dashing of all her Majesty's regiments. A love-match — (he has turned to the crowd) young blood will be young blood, you know." But the crowd is getting impatient of the apathetic demeanour of the bridegroom, as much as they can see of it in the dark corner into which he has sunk back, and makes as though it would move off, even as the orator, gratified with the high-sounding roll of his speech, girds himself up for fresh efforts. As he pauses to wipe his brow, a ragged wag puts in — " Go it again, guvner ! and as you are about it, maybe you'll tell the ladies and gintlemen how you did the trick. Got the poor chap blind drunk, and made him pop unbe knownst to him. An Irish fish wouldn't so much as wink at that fly, but the English aren't haffe so cute.

And what's this, if you plase ? " He alluded to a rapidly driven side car brought to a sudden stand-still at the edge of the crowd, the driver shouting an indignant inquiry as to whether the " Lord- Leftnant " had given them a special license to block the public road. " What is it ? " asks anxiously the gentleman he is driving. " Sure'n it is a wedding, and no mistake. The yellow post-shay is out, and the postillion drunk as a lord. See, that's him taking his aise on the splash-board." " A wedding ! Surely never ! Am I too late then ? But it cannot be his ! " It was. In another moment the new-comer knows it for certain, and groans aloud in his impotence. Just too late. Reckless of consequences, he would have forbidden the banns, torn away the bridegroom, were it from the altar steps. He sees and knows the worst now.

Tricked, as the village wag had suggested, caught, to use the O O DO ' O ' phraseology current in the neighbourhood of the famous Shronebeg salmon river, by an effete old fly that would not have so much as drawn a wink from a native fish, and with consummate skill hooked,played, and finally landed on the hated bank. Bridegroom of this buzzing multitude ! No way out of it ? No sound spot in the wreckage this irretrievable step has wrought ? the new-comer pauses to ask himself. None ! Whether he glance at the life-dream of a girl of nineteen to whom the bridegroom had been all but engaged, the first item of wreckage that occurs to him. Let it go ! be swept away by the relentless wind howling in the eaves of the old coach. The next is not so readily disposed of. An uncle's carefully thought out project for his favourite nephew, the carrying an honoured name to posterity.

Will the latter be charged with that mission now ? and he glances at the bride. A woman of bold black eye, braggart gesture, vulgar accent. No ! the old acres must pass to another, the will be re-made ; he would do it himself. No way out of it ? The answer comes from the bride herself; even as he stands passing the matter in review before him, she has, in the accent abhorred of his soul, hissed out the words, "That which God has joined together, let not man put asunder." " Come, come, my good man ; I believe I have the honour of addressing Captain Wyvern," interposed the bride's father, as he turned from the repairs effected under his supervision ; " time's up now, trace is spliced, and so is this young couple, who naturally wish to be off. Do as you would be done by, old chap, and have the goodness to step down (he was mounted on Letty's perch).

Two bridegrooms is more than me daughter bargained for, though she might have had sixty if she had chosen." No way out of it ? The postillion is cracking his whip, the very seconds are numbered. Stay ! he has thought of something. Flashes through the wreckage a ray of hope, a possible escape from this Church-sanctioned union. He tarries yet a moment to whisper — it might be a parting in junction, into the bridegroom's ear. A gleam of intelligence warms the latter's countenance as he answers, " Never ! Don't think so meanly of me as that ! " " Come down, I tell you ! or I'll " and the irate father brandishes his thorn stick. With downcast eyes the stranger descends, making his way slowly through the dispersing crowd, as though he saw them not. He starts suddenly at sound of a timid voice. " Oh, Captain Wyvern, you are his friend ; do tell me if you think it will break his heart.

I am so afraid it will, he looked so sad, but handsomer than ever ; I could not look at him." He looks up to see. Mostly a tear standing in the corner of a girl's large liquid eye, a rosy lip trembling over little pearly teeth. Soft and sympathetic, frank as to the little weaknesses and illogicalities of her sex ; the average man likes such frankness, if its possessor be but young and pretty. This girl is both, yet the young man turns im patiently from her ; his thoughts are with another, young and pretty likewise, who ought to have sat beside his friend on his wedding-day. But did not. That is his present bitterness ; it renders him inquisitorial to the poor httle Shronebeg beauty. " You did not look at him ! Then how could you know he was looking handsomer than ever ? " " Because — I don't know. I somehow fancy that sad ness suits him best."

Chapter II

The Bridegroom in spite of himself has an old-world savour about it, a conception neither in touch with the time nor possessing the classic interest of the ' Physician in spite of himself.' Ancient history clearly. Let us dismiss such abstractions as we should the irrelevant meanderings of a member of the Opposition, weak enough to remind his opponent of public utterances of his in the dim past of, were it but, three years back. " We have to do with the present," remarked Philip Wyvern. A truism, but truisms are generally true, however commonplace. Mr. Wyvern did not ordinarily deal in them, priding himself somewhat on the originality, and on the whole, well-pointed freshness of his remarks. Dashed (his worst enemy could not deny it to him) with just that soupgon of cynic humour so eminently in touch with an age confessedly pessimistic, whether as regards its literature, arts, politics, naval and military armaments ; in short, most subject-matter of well-bred conversation.

He had not yet attained to the epigrammatic. " I know that," responded the lady whom he addressed, pausing for a moment as for the purpose of taking the very recondite principle of ' letting the dead past bury its dead ' into her most serious consideration ; " but it has struck me as strange and wonderful that Vera and this boy should take to each other like this." " Strange and wonderful," he repeated, with the in dulgent smile a man of the world accords to the inflations of the romantic-woman phraseology ; " you still believe in the strange and wonderful, have not discovered that even remarkable coincidences are out of date, except indeed they have a very considerable element of scandal '3 in them ? But I forgot, you know nothing of the world of which I am thinking." " The fashionable — I mean the fast ?

" " Not exactly, and we are all fast, whether we recognise it or not. It is a breathless age, we old people gasping in the tail of the crowd to keep up with the youngsters in fashion, culture, and all the rest of the fine arts. Can't allow them to get ahead of us, you see. Now look at the airs of that young puppy ! I feel as if I were a length or two behind him as it is, and he is only fourteen." "Arthur is fifteen and a half," corrected she; "his birthday, curiously, is the same as Vera's, the fifteenth of October." " Seven years earher. Strange and wonderful, you think ? and perhaps there is a mystic meaning in the number seven. I must look up my astrologic and caba listic lore — the fashionable appetite for witchcraft de mands it. Well, I don't know, all my wonder in the matter is absorbed by the boy's strong likeness to his father."

" You really think then " but the lady did not finish her sentence. Ladies of a certain age (grey was showing in her soft brown hair) lag considerably behind their juniors in the matter of frankness. Instead of finishing her sentence, she blushes confusedly. Having no such prudish scruples, he hastens to finish it for her. " That he is Penmure's son ? There is no question about it. He is the whole matter and copy of his father. That reminds me of another instance of how we old people lag. I was told the other day by that young prig over there that that was a Shakspearian quotation. Never realized it before, actually imagined it a vulgarism. It was a favourite expression of our old butler, whom one never suspected of being a Shakspearian scholar." " You seem to dislike the poor boy ; and I have always found him very well behaved.