Lord Kilgobbin

CHAPTER XI

The wounded man had just fallen into a first sleep after his disaster, when the press of the capital was already proclaiming throughout the land the attack and search for arms at Kilgobbin Castle. In the National papers a very few lines were devoted to the event; indeed, their tone was one of party sneer at the importance given by their contemporaries to a very ordinary incident. ‘Is there,’ asked the Convicted Felon, ‘anything very strange or new in the fact that Irishmen have determined to be armed? Is English legislation in this country so marked by justice, clemency, and generosity that the people of Ireland prefer to submit their lives and fortunes to its sway, to trusting what brave men alone trust in – their fearlessness and their daring? What is there, then, so remarkable in the repairing to Mr. Kearney’s house for a loan of those weapons of which his family for several generations have forgotten the use?’ In the Government journals the story of the attack was headed, ‘Attack on Kilgobbin Castle. Heroic resistance by a young lady’; in which Kate Kearney’s conduct was described in colours of extravagant eulogy. She was alternately Joan of Arc and the Maid of Saragossa, and it was gravely discussed whether any and what honours of the Crown were at Her Majesty’s disposal to reward such brilliant heroism. In another print of the same stamp the narrative began: ‘The disastrous condition of our country is never displayed in darker colours than when the totally unprovoked character of some outrage has to be recorded by the press. It is our melancholy task to present such a case as this to our readers to-day. If it was our wish to exhibit to a stranger the picture of an Irish estate in which all the blessings of good management, intelligence, kindliness, and Christian charity were displayed; to show him a property where the wellbeing of landlord and tenant were inextricably united, where the condition of the people, their dress, their homes, their food, and their daily comforts, could stand comparison with the most favoured English county, we should point to the Kearney estate of Kilgobbin; and yet it is here, in the very house where his ancestors have resided for generations, that a most savage and dastardly attack is made; and if we feel a sense of shame in recording the outrage, we are recompensed by the proud elation with which we can recount the repulse – the noble and gallant achievement of an Irish girl. History has the record of more momentous feats, but we doubt that there is one in the annals of any land in which a higher heroism was displayed than in this splendid defence by Miss Kearney.’ Then followed the story; not one of the papers having any knowledge of Walpole’s presence on the occasion, or the slightest suspicion that she was aided in any way.

Joe Atlee was busily engaged in conning over and comparing these somewhat contradictory reports, as he sat at his breakfast, his chum Kearney being still in bed and asleep after a late night at a ball. At last there came a telegraphic despatch for Kearney; armed with which, Joe entered the bedroom and woke him.

‘Here’s something for you, Dick,’ cried he. ‘Are you too sleepy to read it?’

‘Tear it open and see what it is, like a good fellow,’ said the other indolently.

‘It’s from your sister – at least, it is signed Kate. It says: “There is no cause for alarm. All is going on well, and papa will be back this evening. I write by this post.”’

‘What does all that mean?’ cried Dick, in surprise.

‘The whole story is in the papers. The boys have taken the opportunity of your father’s absence from home to make a demand for arms at your house, and your sister, it seems, showed fight and beat them off. They talk of two fellows being seen badly wounded, but, of course, that part of the story cannot be relied on. That they got enough to make them beat a retreat is, however, certain; and as they were what is called a strong party, the feat of resisting them is no small glory for a young lady.’

‘It was just what Kate was certain to do. There’s no man with a braver heart.’

I wonder how the beautiful Greek behaved? I should like greatly to hear what part she took in the defence of the citadel. Was she fainting or in hysterics, or so overcome by terror as to be unconscious?’

‘I’ll make you any wager you like, Kate did the whole thing herself. There was a Whiteboy attack to force the stairs when she was a child, and I suppose we rehearsed that combat fully fifty – ay, five hundred times. Kate always took the defence, and though we were sometimes four to one, she kept us back.’

‘By Jove! I think I should be afraid of such a young lady.’

‘So you would. She has more pluck in her heart than half that blessed province you come from. That’s the blood of the old stock you are often pleased to sneer at, and of which the present will be a lesson to teach you better.’

‘May not the lovely Greek be descended from some ancient stock too? Who is to say what blood of Pericles she had not in her veins? I tell you I’ll not give up the notion that she was a sharer in this glory.’

‘If you’ve got the papers with the account, let me see them, Joe. I’ve half a mind to run down by the night-mail – that is, if I can. Have you got any tin, Atlee?’

‘There were some shillings in one of my pockets last night. How much do you want?’

‘Eighteen-and-six first class, and a few shillings for a cab.’

‘I can manage that; but I’ll go and fetch you the papers, there’s time enough to talk of the journey.’

The newsman had just deposited the Croppy on the table as Joe returned to the breakfast-table, and the story of Kilgobbin headed the first column in large capitals. ‘While our contemporaries,’ it began, ‘are recounting with more than their wonted eloquence the injuries inflicted on three poor labouring men, who, in their ignorance of the locality, had the temerity to ask for alms at Kilgobbin Castle yesterday evening, and were ignominiously driven away from the door by a young lady, whose benevolence was administered through a blunderbuss, we, who form no portion of the polite press, and have no pretension to mix in what are euphuistically called the “best circles” of this capital, would like to ask, for the information of those humble classes among which our readers are found, is it the custom for young ladies to await the absence of their fathers to entertain young gentlemen tourists? and is a reputation for even heroic courage not somewhat dearly purchased at the price of the companionship of the admittedly most profligate man of a vicious and corrupt society? The heroine who defended Kilgobbin can reply to our query.’

Joe Atlee read this paragraph three times over before he carried in the paper to Kearney.

‘Here’s an insolent paragraph, Dick,’ he cried, as he threw the paper to him on the bed. ‘Of course it’s a thing cannot be noticed in any way, but it’s not the less rascally for that.’

‘You know the fellow who edits this paper, Joe?’ said Kearney, trembling with passion.

‘No; my friend is doing his bit of oakum at Kilmainham. They gave him thirteen months, and a fine that he’ll never be able to pay; but what would you do if the fellow who wrote it were in the next room at this moment?’

‘Thrash him within an inch of his life.’

‘And, with the inch of life left him, he’d get strong again and write at you and all belonging to you every day of his existence. Don’t you see that all this license is one of the prices of liberty? There’s no guarding against excesses when you establish a rivalry. The doctors could tell you how many diseased lungs and aneurisms are made by training for a rowing match.’

‘I’ll go down by the mail to-night and see what has given the origin to this scandalous falsehood.’

‘There’s no harm in doing that, especially if you take me with you.’

‘Why should I take you, or for what?’

‘As guide, counsellor, and friend.’

‘Bright thought, when all the money we can muster between us is only enough for one fare.’

‘Doubtless, first class; but we could go third class, two of us for the same money. Do you imagine that Damon and Pythias would have been separated if it came even to travelling in a cow compartment?’

‘I wish you could see that there are circumstances in life where the comic man is out of place.’

‘I trust I shall never discover them; at least, so long as Fate treats me with “heavy tragedy.”’

‘I’m not exactly sure, either, whether they ‘d like to receive you just now at Kilgobbin.’

‘Inhospitable thought! My heart assures me of a most cordial welcome.’

‘And I should only stay a day or two at farthest.’

‘Which would suit me to perfection. I must be back here by Tuesday if I had to walk the distance.’

‘Not at all improbable, so far as I know of your resources.’

‘What a churlish dog it is! Now had you, Master Dick, proposed to me that we should go down and pass a week at a certain small thatched cottage on the banks of the Ban, where a Presbyterian minister with eight olive branches vegetates, discussing tough mutton and tougher theology on Sundays, and getting through the rest of the week with the parables and potatoes, I’d have said, Done!’

‘It was the inopportune time I was thinking of. Who knows what confusion this event may not have thrown them into? If you like to risk the discomfort, I make no objection.’

‘To so heartily expressed an invitation there can be but one answer, I yield.’

‘Now look here, Joe, I’d better be frank with you: don’t try it on at Kilgobbin as you do with me.’

‘You are afraid of my insinuating manners, are you?’

‘I am afraid of your confounded impudence, and of that notion you cannot get rid of, that your cool familiarity is a fashionable tone.’

‘How men mistake themselves. I pledge you my word, if I was asked what was the great blemish in my manner, I’d have said it was bashfulness.’

‘Well, then, it is not!’

‘Are you sure, Dick, are you quite sure?’

‘I am quite sure, and unfortunately for you, you’ll find that the majority agree with me.’

‘“A wise man should guard himself against the defects that he might have, without knowing it.” That is a Persian proverb, which you will find in Hafiz. I believe you never read Hafiz!’

‘No, nor you either.’

‘That’s true; but I can make my own Hafiz, and just as good as the real article. By the way, are you aware that the water-carriers at Tehran sing Lalla Rookh, and believe it a national poem?’

‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’

‘I’ll bring down an Anacreon with me, and see if the Greek cousin can spell her way through an ode.’

‘And I distinctly declare you shall do no such thing.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear, what an unamiable trait is envy! By the way, was that your frock-coat I wore yesterday at the races?’

‘I think you know it was; at least you remembered it when you tore the sleeve.’

‘True, most true; that torn sleeve was the reason the rascal would only let me have fifteen shillings on it.’

‘And you mean to say you pawned my coat?’

‘I left it in the temporary care of a relative, Dick; but it is a redeemable mortgage, and don’t fret about it.’

‘Ever the same!’

‘No, Dick, that means worse and worse! Now, I am in the process of reformation. The natural selection, however, where honesty is in the series, is a slow proceeding, and the organic changes are very complicated. As I know, however, you attach value to the effect you produce in that coat, I’ll go and recover it. I shall not need Terence or Juvenal till we come back, and I’ll leave them in the avuncular hands till then.’

‘I wonder you’re not ashamed of these miserable straits.’

‘I am very much ashamed of the world that imposes them on me. I’m thoroughly ashamed of that public in lacquered leather, that sees me walking in broken boots. I’m heartily ashamed of that well-fed, well-dressed, sleek society, that never so much as asked whether the intellectual-looking man in the shabby hat, who looked so lovingly at the spiced beef in the window, had dined yet, or was he fasting for a wager?’

‘There, don’t carry away that newspaper; I want to read over that pleasant paragraph again!’

CHAPTER XII

The two friends were deposited at the Moate station at a few minutes after midnight, and their available resources amounting to something short of two shillings, and the fare of a car and horse to Kilgobbin being more than three times that amount, they decided to devote their small balance to purposes of refreshment, and then set out for the castle on foot.

‘It is a fine moonlight; I know all the short cuts, and I want a bit of walking besides,’ said Kearney; and though Joe was of a self-indulgent temperament, and would like to have gone to bed after his supper and trusted to the chapter of accidents to reach Kilgobbin by a conveyance some time, any time, he had to yield his consent and set out on the road.

‘The fellow who comes with the letter-bag will fetch over our portmanteau,’ said Dick, as they started.

‘I wish you’d give him directions to take charge of me, too,’ said Joe, who felt very indisposed to a long walk.

‘I like you,’ said Dick sneeringly; ‘you are always telling me that you are the sort of fellow for a new colony, life in the bush, and the rest of it, and when it conies to a question of a few miles’ tramp on a bright night in June, you try to skulk it in every possible way. You’re a great humbug, Master Joe.’

‘And you a very small humbug, and there lies the difference between us. The combinations in your mind are so few, that, as in a game of only three cards, there is no skill in the playing; while in my nature, as in that game called tarocco, there are half-a-dozen packs mixed up together, and the address required to play them is considerable.’

‘You have a very satisfactory estimate of your own abilities, Joe.’

‘And why not? If a clever fellow didn’t know he was clever, the opinion of the world on his superiority would probably turn his brain.’

‘And what do you say if his own vanity should do it?’

‘There is really no way of explaining to a fellow like you – ’

‘What do you mean by a fellow like me?’ broke in Dick, somewhat angrily.

‘I mean this, that I’d as soon set to work to explain the theory of exchequer bonds to an Eskimo, as to make an unimaginative man understand something purely speculative. What you, and scores of fellows like you, denominate vanity, is only another form of hopefulness. You and your brethren – for you are a large family – do you know what it is to Hope! that is, you have no idea of what it is to build on the foundation of certain qualities you recognise in yourself, and to say that “if I can go so far with such a gift, such another will help me on so much farther.”’

‘I tell you one thing I do hope, which is, that the next time I set out a twelve miles’ walk, I’ll have a companion less imbued with self-admiration.’

‘And you might and might not find him pleasanter company. Cannot you see, old fellow, that the very things you object to in me are what are wanting in you? they are, so to say, the compliments of your own temperament.’

‘Have you a cigar?’

‘Two – take them both. I’d rather talk than smoke just now.’

‘I am almost sorry for it, though it gives me the tobacco.’

‘Are we on your father’s property yet?’

‘Yes; part of that village we came through belongs to us, and all this bog here is ours.’

‘Why don’t you reclaim it? labour costs a mere nothing in this country. Why don’t you drain those tracts, and treat the soil with lime? I’d live on potatoes, I’d make my family live on potatoes, and my son, and my grandson, for three generations, but I’d win this land back to culture and productiveness.’

‘The fee-simple of the soil wouldn’t pay the cost. It would be cheaper to save the money and buy an estate.’

‘That is one, and a very narrow view of it; but imagine the glory of restoring a lost tract to a nation, welcoming back the prodigal, and installing him in his place amongst his brethren. This was all forest once. Under the shade of the mighty oaks here those gallant O’Caharneys your ancestors followed the chase, or rested at noontide, or skedaddled in double-quick before those smart English of the Pale, who I must say treated your forbears with scant courtesy.’

‘We held our own against them for many a year.’

‘Only when it became so small it was not worth taking. Is not your father a Whig?’

‘He’s a Liberal, but he troubles himself little about parties.’

‘He’s a stout Catholic, though, isn’t he?’

‘He is a very devout believer in his Church,’ said Dick with the tone of one who did not desire to continue the theme.

‘Then why does he stop at Whiggery? why not go in for Nationalism and all the rest of it?’

‘And what’s all the rest of it?’

‘Great Ireland – no first flower of the earth or gem of the sea humbug – but Ireland great in prosperity, her harbours full of ships, the woollen trade, her ancient staple, revived: all that vast unused water-power, greater than all the steam of Manchester and Birmingham tenfold, at full work; the linen manufacture developed and promoted – ’

‘And the Union repealed?’

‘Of course; that should be first of all. Not that I object to the Union, as many do, on the grounds of English ignorance as to Ireland. My dislike is, that, for the sake of carrying through certain measures necessary to Irish interests, I must sit and discuss questions which have no possible concern for me, and touch me no more than the debates in the Cortes, or the Reichskammer at Vienna. What do you or I care for who rules India, or who owns Turkey? What interest of mine is it whether Great Britain has five ironclads or fifty, or whether the Yankees take Canada, and the Russians Kabul?’

‘You’re a Fenian, and I am not.’

‘I suppose you’d call yourself an Englishman?’

‘I am an English subject, and I owe my allegiance to England.’

‘Perhaps for that matter, I owe some too; but I owe a great many things that I don’t distress myself about paying.’

‘Whatever your sentiments are on these matters – and, Joe, I am not disposed to think you have any very fixed ones – pray do me the favour to keep them to yourself while under my father’s roof. I can almost promise you he’ll obtrude none of his peculiar opinions on you, and I hope you will treat him with a like delicacy.’

‘What will your folks talk, then? I can’t suppose they care for books, art, or the drama. There is no society, so there can be no gossip. If that yonder be the cabin of one of your tenants, I’ll certainly not start the question of farming.’

‘There are poor on every estate,’ said Dick curtly.

‘Now what sort of a rent does that fellow pay – five pounds a year?’

‘More likely five-and-twenty or thirty shillings.’

‘By Jove, I’d like to set up house in that fashion, and make love to some delicately-nurtured miss, win her affections, and bring her home to such a spot. Wouldn’t that be a touchstone of affection, Dick?’

‘If I could believe you were in earnest, I’d throw you neck and heels into that bog-hole.’

‘Oh, if you would!’ cried he, and there was a ring of truthfulness in his voice now there could be no mistaking. Half-ashamed of the emotion his idle speech had called up, and uncertain how best to treat the emergency, Kearney said nothing, and Atlee walked on for miles without a word.

‘You can see the house now. It tops the trees yonder,’ said Dick.

‘That is Kilgobbin Castle, then?’ said Joe slowly.

‘There’s not much of castle left about it. There is a square block of a tower, and you can trace the moat and some remains of outworks.’

‘Shall I make you a confession, Dick? I envy you all that! I envy you what smacks of a race, a name, an ancestry, a lineage. It’s a great thing to be able to “take up the running,” as folks say, instead of making all the race yourself; and there’s one inestimable advantage in it, it rescues you from all indecent haste about asserting your station. You feel yourself to be a somebody and you’ve not hurried to proclaim it. There now, my boy, if you’d have said only half as much as that on the score of your family, I’d have called you an arrant snob. So much for consistency.’

‘What you have said gave me pleasure, I’ll own that.’

‘I suppose it was you planted those trees there. It was a nice thought, and makes the transition from the bleak bog to the cultivated land more easy and graceful. Now I see the castle well. It’s a fine portly mass against the morning sky, and I perceive you fly a flag over it.’

‘When the lord is at home.’

‘Ay, and by the way, do you give him his title while talking to him here?’

‘The tenants do, and the neighbours and strangers do as they please about it.’

‘Does he like it himself?’

‘If I was to guess, I should perhaps say he does like it. Here we are now. Inside this low gate you are within the demesne, and I may bid you welcome to Kilgobbin. We shall build a lodge here one of these days. There’s a good stretch, however, yet to the castle. We call it two miles, and it’s not far short of it.’