Celt and Saxon | Page 5

Mr. Adister appeared to acquiesce. Observations of sly import went by
him like the whispering wind.
'Your priests should know,' he said.
To this Patrick thought it well not to reply. After a pause between them,
he referred to the fencing.
'I was taught by a Parisian master of the art, sir.'
'You have been to Paris?'
'I was educated in Paris.'
'How? Ah!' Mr. Adister corrected himself in the higher notes of
recollection. 'I think I have heard something of a Jesuit seminary.'
'The Fathers did me the service to knock all I know into me, and call it
education, by courtesy,' said Patrick, basking in the unobscured frown
of his host.
'Then you are accustomed to speak French?' The interrogation was put
to extract some balm from the circumstance.
Patrick tried his art of fence with the absurdity by saying: 'All but like a
native.'
'These Jesuits taught you the use of the foils?'
'They allowed me the privilege of learning, sir.'
After meditation, Mr. Adister said: 'You don't dance?' He said it
speculating on the' kind of gentleman produced in Paris by the disciples
of Loyola.
'Pardon me, sir, you hit on another of my accomplishments.'

'These Jesuits encourage dancing?'
'The square dance--short of the embracing: the valse is under interdict.'
Mr. Adister peered into his brows profoundly for a glimpse of the
devilry in that exclusion of the valse.
What object had those people in encouraging the young fellow to be a
perfect fencer and dancer, so that he should be of the school of the
polite world, and yet subservient to them?
'Thanks to the Jesuits, then, you are almost a Parisian,' he remarked;
provoking the retort
'Thanks to them, I've stored a little, and Paris is to me as pure a place as
four whitewashed walls:' Patrick added: 'without a shadow of a monk
on them.' Perhaps it was thrown in for the comfort of mundane ears
afflicted sorely, and no point of principle pertained to the slur on a
monk.
Mr. Adister could have exclaimed, That shadow of the monk! had he
been in an exclamatory mood. He said: 'They have not made a monk of
you, then.'
Patrick was minded to explain how that the Jesuits are a religious order
exercising worldly weapons. The lack of precise words admonished
him of the virtue of silence, and he retreated--with a quiet negative:
'They have not.'
'Then, you are no Jesuit?' he was asked.
Thinking it scarcely required a response, he shrugged.
'You would not change your religion, sir?' said Mr. Adister in seeming
anger.
Patrick thought he would have to rise: he half fancied himself
summoned to change his religion or depart from the house.

'Not I,' said he.
'Not for the title of Prince?' he was further pressed, and he replied:
'I don't happen to have an ambition for the title of Prince.'
'Or any title!' interjected Mr. Adister, 'or whatever the devil can
offer!--or,' he spoke more pointedly, 'for what fools call a brilliant
marriage?'
'My religion?' Patrick now treated the question seriously and raised his
head: 'I'd not suffer myself to be asked twice.'
The sceptical northern-blue eyes of his host dwelt on him with their full
repellent stare.
The young Catholic gentleman expected he might hear a frenetic zealot
roar out: Be off!
He was not immediately reassured by the words 'Dead or alive, then,
you have a father!'
The spectacle of a state of excitement without a show of feeling was
novel to Patrick. He began to see that he was not implicated in a wrath
that referred to some great offender, and Mr. Adister soon confirmed
his view by saying: 'You are no disgrace to your begetting, sir!'
With that he quitted his chair, and hospitably proposed to conduct his
guest over the house and grounds.
CHAPTER III
CAROLINE
Men of the Adister family having taken to themselves brides of a very
dusty pedigree from the Principality, there were curious rough
heirlooms to be seen about the house, shields on the armoury walls and
hunting- horns, and drinking-horns, and spears, and chain-belts bearing

clasps of heads of beasts; old gold ornaments, torques, blue-stone
necklaces, under glass-cases, were in the library; huge rings that must
have given the wearers fearful fists; a shirt of coarse linen with a pale
brown spot on the breast, like a fallen beech-leaf; and many sealed
parchment-skins, very precious, for an inspection of which, as Patrick
was bidden to understand, History humbly knocked at the Earlsfont
hall-doors; and the proud muse made her transcripts of them kneeling.
He would have been affected by these wonders had any relic of Adiante
appeased his thirst. Or had there been one mention of her, it would have
disengaged him from the incessant speculations regarding the daughter
of the house,