Part 2

‘It was given to me,’ Le Gautier replied, with an enigmatic smile. ‘It could not help you, if I told you.—Sir Geoffrey, may I ask you to lend me this coin for a short while? I will tell you some time what I want it for.’

‘Some other time, perhaps.’—Le Gautier threw the coin into its place.—‘You see, I regard it as a valuable curiosity and relic, or perhaps I might part with it. You will pardon me.—But I forgot all about our spiritualistic discourse. As you are a medium, I will ask you’——

‘At some future time, with all the pleasure in life,’ Le Gautier interrupted hastily. ‘Meanwhile, it is getting late—past eleven now.’

As they walked back to the salon, the Frenchman was busy with his thoughts. ‘What a lucky find!’ he muttered. ‘It is the missing insignia, sure enough, and the ill-fated Ughtred Charteris is mine host’s brother. I wonder what I can make out of this? There ought to be something in it, with a feeble-minded man who believes in spiritualism, if my hand has not lost its cunning. _Nous verrons._’

He showed nothing of his thoughts, however, as he parted from Enid with a smile and neatly turned compliment. It was getting late now; the streets were empty as the friends turned homeward, Salvarini bidding the others good-night and turning off in the direction of his apartments.

‘You had better change your mind, and come with us on Friday, Hector,’ Visci urged Le Gautier. ‘The baronet and his daughter are to be of the party. Throw work to the dogs for the day, and come.’

‘My dear Carlo, the thing is impossible. Do you think I should be chained here this lovely weather, if stern necessity did not compel? If possibly I can get over later in the day, I will not fail you.’

‘I am very sorry,’ Visci replied regretfully, ‘because this is the last time, in all probability, our friends will meet together for some time.’

‘I am sorry too, Carlo, but I cannot help it. Good-night.’

Le Gautier watched his friend along the moonlit street, a smile upon his face not pleasant to see. ‘Ah, yes,’ he murmured, ‘it is quite impossible. Genevieve is a good little girl, but good little girls are apt to cloy. It is getting dangerous. If Visci should find out, it would be a case of twelve paces and hair-triggers; and I cannot sacrifice myself yet—not even for Genevieve.’

ULSTER PROVINCIALISMS.

The people of Ulster may fairly claim a larger share of public attention than has usually been accorded to them: they have rendered their province prosperous in a country which is a stranger to prosperity; they have established and maintained great industries in a country of decayed trade and ruined commerce. In the colonies, they have risen in a remarkable degree to positions of affluence and authority; and in all the British dominions, Ulstermen are found in the van of commercial and professional life.

The Ulsterman comes of a very mixed descent. Just as the Englishman was originally a compound of Saxon, Norman, and Dane, so in the Ulsterman’s veins flows the blood of Irish, Scotch, and English progenitors. The relative proportion of each element varies much according to locality and religion. On the shores of Antrim and Down, the population is in many places almost as purely Scotch as in Ayrshire or Lanark. In Belfast, Scotch blood predominates; but there was originally a large English element. In Donegal and Fermanagh, the Celtic element is in excess. Everywhere, the Protestant derives more from Scotch and English sources; the Roman Catholic, from Irish.

From the earliest times, there has been a large emigration from Scotland to the opposite Irish shore. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. the chief settlements from England took place; and the settlers from both countries gradually pushed back the original Irish inhabitants to the mountains and into the interior. To this day, there is a secluded district in County Antrim, known as the Glens of Antrim, where the Irish language may still be heard, although it has long departed from other portions of the same county. As we travel westward, Irish more frequently meets the ear, and in many parts of Donegal it is the prevailing tongue.

It is not surprising that in a province of such varied lineage, provincialisms should be numerous and curious. To guard against misconception, let it be understood that the educated Ulsterman speaks like educated people elsewhere—namely, with perfect correctness and scarcely appreciable accent. The peculiar words and phrases about to be enumerated are heard almost exclusively among the poorer ranks, or, if employed at all by the educated classes, it is only in jest and with a recognition of their provincial character. The majority of them are of Scotch origin; some are found in colloquial and provincial English; while others are of Hibernian extraction.[1]

[1] We are indebted for much of the information contained in this article to an excellent glossary compiled by Mr W. H. Patterson, M.R.I.A., of Belfast.

As might have been expected, proverbs and proverbial expressions form a large class of these provincialisms. ‘All to the one side, like Clogher,’ is an allusion to a town in County Tyrone where all the houses and shops are on one side of the thoroughfare, the opposite side being a private demesne. ‘That bangs (surpasses) Banagher’ is an allusion to the great fair held at that spot. When the Ulsterman wishes to imply that a certain event is extremely improbable, he says that it will happen at ‘Tibb’s Eve,’ adding the mysterious information that this is ‘neither before nor after Christmas.’ This expression is a curiously exact counterpart of the Latin phrase about the Greek kalends. ‘As blunt as a beetle’ refers to a species of heavy wooden mallet to which Shakspeare alludes. ‘As busy as a nailer,’ ‘As clean as a new pin,’ ‘As crooked as a ram’s horn,’ are common Ulster expressions, which do not call for any explanation. A more mysterious expression is the curious phrase, ‘As grave as a mustard-pot’—used to express preternatural solemnity. People of bilious complexion are often described with more force than elegance as being ‘As yellow as a duck’s foot.’

The Ulsterman has no special repute for gallantry, yet his simile for anything exceptionally simple is, ‘As easy as kiss.’ His favourite phrase when about to impart some very confidential information is, ‘Between you and me and the post.’ A person whose sanity is open to question is often described as ‘Wanting a square of being round’—a curiously inexact expression. A person who gapes with wide-mouthed wonder is said to look ‘like a duck in thunder.’ Similarity of political or religious opinion is expressed in Ulster by saying that two people ‘Dig with the same foot.’ ‘A dead man’s plunge’ is a peculiar Ulster expression; it is applied to the short, sudden, and rather hollow sound made by a smooth flat pebble when it is tossed into the air and falls into water upon its edge.

A large class of provincialisms are made up of asseverative expressions. The Ulsterman often prefaces his remarks by ‘Assay’ (I say) or ‘A’m sayin’’ (I’m saying). ‘May I never stir’ introduces some peculiarly solemn assertion. ‘A month of Sundays,’ and still more strongly, ‘All my born days,’ are emphatic expressions for long periods of time. ‘Dear help your wit’ expresses commiseration for the innocence and simplicity of the person addressed.

Ulster adjurations are a curious medley, ‘Heth’ and ‘Feth’ being frequently used. ‘By Jaiminie King’ is a curious expression often heard in County Fermanagh. ‘Holy Farmer’ is another obscure form of oath. ‘Hokey oh’ is a phrase implying astonishment and alarm. ‘Hoker’ is used by Chaucer to express frowardness, and ‘Hocer’ in Anglo-Saxon meant a reproach. These words probably contain the clue to the origin of this obscure Ulster provincialism.

Expressions conveying contempt or endearment are common. ‘Bad scran to you’ is a phrase of angry contempt. ‘Skran’ in Icelandic means ‘refuse.’ Milton used the word ‘scrannel’ (‘scrannel pipes’) to express poor or mean; and ‘scranny’ still survives in provincial English in this sense. ‘Bad cess to you’ is another Ulsterism of similar meaning, of which the origin is more doubtful; possibly ‘cess’ is a contraction for success. ‘Give me none of your back-talk’ is said by a superior to an inferior, meaning, ‘Don’t presume to argue the question with me.’ A ‘Tory rogue’ is still commonly used in Ulster in the sense of a scamp; but it is often applied to children in a playful sense. It is an interesting relic of the original meaning of the word Tory—an Irish outlaw or freebooter. A ‘tongue-thrashing’ is a vigorous phrase for a severe rebuke. ‘Carnaptious’ means quarrelsome and fault-finding.

Some salutations are characteristic of the northern province. ‘How do you get your health?’ often takes the place of the more vague, ‘How do you do?’ ‘The top of the morning to you’ is a cheery way of saying ‘Good-morrow.’

As might have been expected, there is a long array of peculiar botanical and zoological expressions characteristic of Ulster. Every district has its local names for flowers, plants, birds, and animals, and in these Ulster is peculiarly rich. Potatoes are known as ‘spuds;’ ‘biller’ means water-cress; ‘daffydowndillies’ is a lengthened form of daffodils; ‘mayflower’ is the marsh marigold or _Caltha palustris_. The heads of the common plantain are called ‘cocks’ or ‘fighting-cocks,’ because children make a game of striking them off in mimic warfare. The dock-plant is called the ‘dockan’ (Scotch), and its leaf is a popular remedy for nettle-sting; the wood-sorrel is known as ‘cuckoo-sorrel.’

A still longer list of zoological terms might be made out. The bottle-nosed whale is known as the ‘herring-hog;’ the pollack is called ‘lythe;’ the lobworm used by fishermen for bait is called the ‘lug;’ the stickleback has its name corrupted into ‘spricklybeg;’ the gadfly is known as the ‘cleg’ (which is also its Scotch name); ‘yilly-yorlin’ (also Scotch) is the yellow-hammer; the ‘felt’ is the redwing; the ‘peeweet’ (Scotch again) means the lapwing; the ‘mosscheeper’ is the titlark; the cormorant is known as the ‘scart.’

We now turn to some provincialisms which do not admit of a ready classification. ‘Bis’ is often said for ‘is,’ and ‘bissent’ for ‘is not.’ Here we have an instance of a very common phenomenon—an archaic form surviving as a colloquialism or provincialism. A vast number of our common vulgarisms which we are inclined to regard as breaches of grammar are simply good grammar out of date; in this case, the provincialism almost exactly preserves a very ancient form of the verb. The Anglo-Saxon verb ‘to be’ present tense indicative mood was ‘beom, bist, bith,’ whence no doubt come ‘bis’ and ‘bissent.’ ‘Braird,’ often used in Ulster, as in Scotland, of the young springing grain, is the Anglo-Saxon ‘brord,’ meaning the first blade. ‘Buffer’ in the sense of ‘boxer’ is from the old French word ‘buffe,’ meaning a blow.

‘Chew, sir,’ is a form of rebuke applied to a snarling dog. ‘Dwamish’ means faint and sick, from ‘dwam,’ a Scotch word signifying a swoon or a sudden attack of illness. ‘Dunt’ means a blow, and is old English and Scotch; Burns says, ‘I’ll tak dunts frae naebody.’ A ‘founder,’ according to our dictionaries, is a term in farriery to indicate lameness caused by inflammation within the hoof of a horse. In Ulster, the word is often used to express a chill or wetting followed by illness. A man after being exposed to the vicissitudes of weather becomes seriously ill without knowing what is the matter, and he expresses his condition by saying that he has got ‘a regular founder.’ ‘Head-beetler’ is used in the same vulgar sense as ‘Head-cook and bottle-washer’ in some localities. The beetle was a machine for producing figured fabrics by the pressure of a roller, and ‘head-beetler’ probably means the chief director of this class of work. A ‘heeler’ is a cock which strikes out well with his heels. In Ulster, the word is sometimes used for a bold forward woman.

When a child begins to nod and look sleepy, he is told that ‘Johnny Nod is coming up his back,’ which is understood as a signal for going to bed. ‘Potatoes and point’ is a curious phrase in which the poverty of the lower classes in Ireland finds unconscious expression. The idea is, that the potatoes before being eaten are ‘pointed’ at a herring, which is hung up to serve as an imaginary relish to the simple fare, but too precious to be freely consumed. ‘Dab at the stool’ is another expression referring to eating customs: salt is placed upon a stool, and each individual, as the potatoes are taken out of the pot, takes one and ‘dabs’ it at the stool, to get a portion of the salt. ‘Pouce’ and ‘poucey’ mean dust and dusty, but by a common perversion of language, ‘poucey’ comes to mean a person in a flax-mill who is exposed to the irritation of dusty particles, and becomes in consequence short-winded and bronchitic. ‘Roughness,’ as in Scotland, means plenty. ‘Ruction’ signifies a row, a disturbance; possibly it is a contraction of ructation, from the Latin verb _ructare_. ‘Skelly,’ to squint, is from the Scotch, and is found in Scott. The Danish is ‘skele.’ ‘Smittle,’ also used in Scotland, means infectious, and is connected with the verb to smite. ‘Think long’ means to be homesick.

We thus see how much curious information and how many relics of the past are found in the despised vulgarisms of a provincial patois. They are the fossils of language, and speak to us of vanished peoples and of ages long gone by.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER XLVI.

The days went slowly, slowly on, and Mr Dupuy and Harry Noel both continued to recover steadily from their severe injuries. Marian came over every day to help with the nursing, and took charge for the most part, with Aunt Clemmy’s aid, of the young Englishman; while Nora’s time was chiefly taken up in attending to her father’s manifold necessities. Still at odd moments she did venture to help a little in taking care of poor Harry, whose gratitude for all her small attentions was absolutely unbounded, and very touching. True, she came comparatively seldom into the sickroom (for such in fact it was, the crushing blow on Harry’s head having been followed by violent symptoms of internal injury to the brain, which made his case far more serious in the end than Mr Dupuy’s); but whenever he woke up after a short doze, in his intervals of pain, he always found a fresh passion-flower, or a sweet white rosebud, or a graceful spray of clambering Martinique clematis, carefully placed in a tiny vase with pure water on the little table by the bedside; and he knew well whose dainty fingers had picked the pretty blossoms and arranged them so deftly, with their delicate background of lace-like wild West Indian maiden-hair, in the tiny bouquets. More than once, too, when Aunt Clemmy wasn’t looking, he took the white rosebuds out of the water for a single moment and gazed at them tenderly with a wistful eye; and when, one afternoon, Marian surprised him in the very act, as she came in with his regulation cup of chicken-broth at the half-hour, she saw that the colour rushed suddenly even into his brown and bloodless cheek, and his eyes fell like a boy’s as he replaced the buds with a guilty look in the vase beside him. But she said nothing about the matter at the time, only reserving it for Nora’s private delectation in the little boudoir half an hour later.

As Mr Dupuy got better, one firm resolve seemed to have imprinted itself indelibly upon his unbending nature—the resolve to quit Trinidad for ever at the very earliest moment, when convalescence and Macfarlane would combine to allow him. He would even sell Orange Grove itself, he said, and go over and live permanently for the rest of his days in England. ‘That is to say, in England for the summer,’ he observed casually to Nora; ‘for I don’t suppose any human being in his right senses would ever dream of stopping in such a wretched climate through a whole dreary English winter. In October, I shall always go to Nice, or Pau, or Mentone, or some other of these new-fashioned continental wintering-places that people go to nowadays in Europe; some chance, I suppose, of seeing the sun once and again there, at anyrate. But one thing I’ve quite decided upon: I won’t live any longer in Trinidad. I’m not afraid; but I object on principle to vivisection, especially conducted with a blunt instrument. At my time of life, a man naturally dislikes being cut up alive by those horrible cutlasses. You and your cousin Tom may stop here by yourselves and manage Pimento Valley, if you choose; but I decline any longer to be used as the _corpus vile_ for a nigger experimentalist to exercise his skill upon. It doesn’t suit my taste, and I refuse to submit to it. The fact is, Nora, my dear, the island isn’t any longer a fit place for a gentleman to live in. It was all very well in the old days, before we got a pack of Exeter Hall demagogues, sent out here by the government of the day on purpose to excite our own servants to rebellion and insurrection against us. Nobody ever heard of the niggers rising or hacking one to pieces bodily in those days. But ever since this man Hawthorn, whose wife you’re so thick with—a thing that no lady would have dreamt of countenancing in the days before these new-fangled doctrines came into fashion—ever since this man Hawthorn was sent out here, preaching his revolutionary cut-throat principles broadcast, the island hasn’t been a fit place at all for a gentleman to live in; and I’ve made up my mind to leave it at once and go over to England.’

Meanwhile, events had arisen which rendered it certain that the revolutionary demagogue himself, who had saved Mr Dupuy’s life and all the other white lives in the entire island, would also have to go to England at a short notice. Edward had intended, indeed, in pursuance of his hasty promise to the excited negroes, to resign his judgeship, and return home, in order to confer with the Colonial Office on the subject of their grievances. But before he had time to settle his affairs and make arrangements for his approaching departure, a brisk interchange of messages had taken place between the Trinidad government and the home authorities. Meetings had been held in London at which the whole matter had been thoroughly ventilated; questions had been asked and answered in parliament; and the English papers had called unanimously for a thorough sifting of the relations between the planters and the labourers throughout the whole of the West India Islands. In particular, they had highly praised the courage and wisdom with which young Mr Hawthorn had stepped into the breach at the critical moment, and single-handed, averted a general massacre, by his timely influence with the infuriated rioters. More than one paper had suggested that Mr Hawthorn should be forthwith recalled, to give evidence on the subject before a Select Committee; and as a direct result of that suggestion, Edward shortly after received a message from the Colonial Secretary, summoning him to London immediately, with all despatch, on business connected with the recent rising of the negroes in Trinidad.

Mr Dupuy had already chosen the date on which he should sail; but when he heard that ‘that man Hawthorn’ had actually taken a passage by the same steamer, he almost changed his mind, for the first time in his life, and half determined to remain in the island, now that it was to be freed at last from the polluting presence and influence of this terrible fire-eating brown revolutionist. Perhaps, he thought, when once Hawthorn was gone, Trinidad might yet be a place fit for a gentleman to live in. The Dupuys had inhabited Orange Grove, father and son, for nine generations; and it would be a pity indeed if they were to be driven away from the ancestral plantations by the meddlesome interference of an upstart radical coloured lawyer.

In this dubitative frame of mind, then, Mr Dupuy, as soon as ever Macfarlane would allow him to mount his horse again, rode slowly down from Orange Grove to pay a long-meditated call at Government House upon His Excellency the governor. In black frock-coat and shiny silk hat, as is the rigorous etiquette upon such occasions, even under a blazing tropical noontide, he went his way with a full heart, ready to pour forth the vials of his wrath into the sympathetic ears of the Queen’s representative against this wretched intriguer Hawthorn, by whose Machiavellian machinations (Mr Dupuy was justly proud in his own mind of that sonorous alliteration) the happy and contented peasantry of the island of Trinidad had been spurred and flogged and slowly roused into unwilling rebellion against their generous and paternal employers.

Judge of his amazement, therefore, when, after listening patiently to his long and fierce tirade, Sir Adalbert rose from his chair calmly, and said in a clear and distinct voice these incredible words: ‘Mr Dupuy, you unfortunately quite mistake the whole nature of the situation. This abortive insurrection is not due to Mr Hawthorn or to any other one person whatever. It has long been brewing; we have for months feared and anticipated it; and it is the outcome of a widespread and general discontent among the negroes themselves, sedulously fostered, we are afraid’—here Mr Dupuy’s face began to brighten with joyous anticipation—‘by the unwise and excessive severity of many planters, both in their public capacity as magistrates, and in their private capacity as employers of labour.’ (Here Mr Dupuy’s face first fell blankly, and then pursed itself up suddenly in a perfectly comical expression of profound dismay and intense astonishment.) ‘It is to Mr Hawthorn alone,’ the governor went on, glancing severely at the astounded planter, ‘that many unwise proprietors of estates in the island of Trinidad owe their escape from the not wholly unprovoked anger of the insurgent negroes; and so highly do the home authorities value Mr Hawthorn’s courage and judgment in this emergency, that they have just summoned him back to England, to aid them with his advice and experience in settling a new _modus vivendi_ to be shortly introduced between negroes and employers.’

Mr Dupuy never quite understood how he managed to reel out of the governor’s drawing-room without fainting, from sheer astonishment and horror; or how he managed to restrain his legs from lifting up his toes automatically against the sacred person of the Queen’s representative. But he did manage somehow to stagger down the steps in a dazed and stupefied fashion, much as he had staggered along the path when he felt Delgado hacking him about the body at the blazing cane-houses; and he rode back home to Orange Grove, red in the face as an angry turkey-cock, more convinced than ever in his own mind that Trinidad was indeed no longer a fit place for any gentleman of breeding to live in. And in spite of Edward’s having taken passage by the same ship, he determined to clear out of the island, bag and baggage, at the earliest possible opportunity.