Kitabı oku: «Lord Kilgobbin», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XVIII

MATHEW KEARNEY’S ‘STUDY’

Had Mathew Kearney but read the second sheet of his correspondent’s letter, it is more than likely that Dick had not taken such a gloomy view of his condition. Mr. McKeown’s epistle continued in this fashion: ‘That ought to do for him, Mathew, or my name ain’t Tom McKeown. It is not that he is any worse or better than other young fellows of his own stamp, but he has the greatest scamp in Christendom for his daily associate. Atlee is deep in all the mischief that goes on in the National press. I believe he is a head-centre of the Fenians, and I know he has a correspondence with the French socialists, and that Rights-of-labour-knot of vagabonds who meet at Geneva. Your boy is not too wise to keep himself out of these scrapes, and he is just, by name and station, of consequence enough to make these fellows make up to and flatter him. Give him a sound fright, then, and when he is thoroughly alarmed about his failure, send him abroad for a short tour, let him go study at Halle or Heidelberg – anything, in short, that will take him away from Ireland, and break off his intimacy with this Atlee and his companions. While he is with you at Kilgobbin, don’t let him make acquaintance with those Radical fellows in the county towns. Keep him down, Mathew, keep him down; and if you find that you cannot do this, make him believe that you’ll be one day lords of Kilgobbin, and the more he has to lose the more reluctant he’ll be to risk it. If he’d take to farming, and marry some decent girl, even a little beneath him in life, it would save you all uneasiness; but he is just that thing now that brings all the misery on us in Ireland. He thinks he’s a gentleman because he can do nothing; and to save himself from the disgrace of incapacity, ‘he’d like to be a rebel.’

If Mr. Tom McKeown’s reasonings were at times somewhat abstruse and hard of comprehension to his friend Kearney, it was not that he did not bestow on them due thought and reflection; and over this private and strictly confidential page he had now meditated for hours.

‘Bad luck to me,’ cried he at last, ‘if I see what he’s at. If I’m to tell the boy he is ruined to-day, and to-morrow to announce to him that he is a lord – if I’m to threaten him now with poverty, and the morning after I’m to send him to Halle, or Hell, or wherever it is – I’ll soon be out of my mind myself through bare confusion. As to having him “down,” he’s low enough; but so shall I be too, if I keep him there. I’m not used to seeing my house uncomfortable, and I cannot bear it.’

Such were some of his reflections, over his agent’s advice; and it may be imagined that the Machiavellian Mr. McKeown had fallen upon a very inapt pupil.

It must be owned that Mathew Kearney was somewhat out of temper with his son even before the arrival of this letter. While the ‘swells,’ as he would persist in calling the two English visitors, were there, Dick took no trouble about them, nor to all seeming made any impression on them. As Mathew said, ‘He let Joe Atlee make all the running, and, signs on it! Joe Atlee was taken off to town as Walpole’s companion, and Dick not so much as thought of. Joe, too, did the honours of the house as if it was his own, and talked to Lockwood about coming down for the partridge-shooting as if he was the head of the family. The fellow was a bad lot, and McKeown was right so far – the less Dick saw of him the better.’

The trouble and distress these reflections, and others like them, cost him would more than have recompensed Dick, had he been hard-hearted enough to desire a vengeance. ‘For a quarter of an hour, or maybe twenty minutes,’ said he, ‘I can be as angry as any man in Europe, and, if it was required of me during that time to do anything desperate – downright wicked – I could be bound to do it; and what’s more, I’d stand to it afterwards if it cost me the gallows. But as for keeping up the same mind, as for being able to say to myself my heart is as hard as ever, I’m just as much bent on cruelty as I was yesterday – that’s clean beyond me; and the reason, God help me, is no great comfort to me after all – for it’s just this: that when I do a hard thing, whether distraining a creature out of his bit of ground, selling a widow’s pig, or fining a fellow for shooting a hare, I lose my appetite and have no heart for my meals; and as sure as I go asleep, I dream of all the misfortunes in life happening to me, and my guardian angel sitting laughing all the while and saying to me, “Didn’t you bring it on yourself, Mathew Kearney? couldn’t you bear a little rub without trying to make a calamity of it? Must somebody be always punished when anything goes wrong in life? Make up your mind to have six troubles every day of your life, and see how jolly you’ll be the day you can only count five, or maybe four.”’

As Mr. Kearney sat brooding in this wise, Peter Gill made his entrance into the study with the formidable monthly lists and accounts, whose examination constituted a veritable doomsday to the unhappy master.

‘Wouldn’t next Saturday do, Peter?’ asked Kearney, in a tone of almost entreaty.

‘I’m afther ye since Tuesday last, and I don’t think I’ll be able to go on much longer.’

Now as Mr. Gill meant by this speech to imply that he was obliged to trust entirely to his memory for all the details which would have been committed to writing by others, and to a notched stick for the manifold dates of a vast variety of events, it was not really a very unfair request he had made for a peremptory hearing.

‘I vow to the Lord,’ sighed out Kearney, ‘I believe I’m the hardest-worked man in the three kingdoms.’

‘Maybe you are,’ muttered Gill, though certainly the concurrence scarcely sounded hearty, while he meanwhile arranged the books.

‘Oh, I know well enough what you mean. If a man doesn’t work with a spade or follow the plough, you won’t believe that he works at all. He must drive, or dig, or drain, or mow. There’s no labour but what strains a man’s back, and makes him weary about the loins; but I’ll tell you, Peter Gill, that it’s here’ – and he touched his forehead with his finger – ‘it’s here is the real workshop. It’s thinking and contriving; setting this against that; doing one thing that another may happen, and guessing what will come if we do this and don’t do that; carrying everything in your brain, and, whether you are sitting over a glass with a friend or taking a nap after dinner, thinking away all the time! What would you call that, Peter Gill – what would you call that?’

‘Madness, begorra, or mighty near it!’

‘No; it’s just work – brain-work. As much above mere manual labour as the intellect, the faculty that raises us above the brutes, is above the – the – ’

‘Yes,’ said Gill, opening the large volume and vaguely passing his hand over a page. ‘It’s somewhere there about the Conacre!’

‘You’re little better than a beast!’ said Kearney angrily.

‘Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. Let us finish this, now that we’re about it.’

And so saying, he deposited his other books and papers on the table, and then drew from his breast-pocket a somewhat thick roll of exceedingly dirty bank-notes, fastened with a leather thong.

‘I’m glad to see some money at last, Peter,’ cried Kearney, as his eye caught sight of the notes.

‘Faix, then, it’s little good they’ll do ye,’ muttered the other gruffly.

‘What d’ye mean by that, sir?’ asked he angrily.

‘Just what I said, my lord, the devil a more nor less, and that the money you see here is no more yours nor it is mine! It belongs to the land it came from. Ay, ay, stamp away, and go red in the face: you must hear the truth, whether you like it or no. The place we’re living in is going to rack and ruin out of sheer bad treatment. There’s not a hedge on the estate; there isn’t a gate that could be called a gate; the holes the people live in isn’t good enough for badgers; there’s no water for the mill at the cross-roads; and the Loch meadows is drowned with wet – we’re dragging for the hay, like seaweed! And you think you’ve a right to these’ – and he actually shook the notes at him – to go and squander them on them “impedint” Englishmen that was laughing at you! Didn’t I hear them myself about the tablecloth that one said was the sail of a boat.’

‘Will you hold your tongue?’ cried Kearney, wild with passion.

‘I will not! I’ll die on the floore but I’ll speak my mind.’

This was not only a favourite phrase of Mr. Gill’s, but it was so far significant that it always indicated he was about to give notice to leave – a menace on his part of no unfrequent occurrence.

‘Ye’s going, are ye?’ asked Kearney jeeringly.

‘I just am; and I’m come to give up the books, and to get my receipts and my charac – ter.’

‘It won’t be hard to give the last, anyway,’ said Kearney, with a grin.

‘So much the better. It will save your honour much writing, with all that you have to do.’

‘Do you want me to kick you out of the office, Peter Gill?’

‘No, my lord, I’m going quiet and peaceable. I’m only asking my rights.’

‘You’re bidding hard to be kicked out, you are.’

‘Am I to leave them here, or will your honour go over the books with me?’

‘Leave the notes, sir, and go to the devil.’

‘I will, my lord; and one comfort at least I’ll have – it won’t be harder to put up with his temper.’

Mr. Gill’s head barely escaped the heavy account-book which struck the door above him as he escaped from the room, and Mathew Kearney sat back in his chair and grasped the arms of it like one threatened with a fit.

‘Where’s Miss Kitty – where’s my daughter?’ cried he aloud, as though there was some one within hearing. ‘Taking the dogs a walk, I’ll be bound,’ muttered he, ‘or gone to see somebody’s child with the measles, devil fear her! She has plenty on her hands to do anywhere but at home. The place might be going to rack and ruin for her if there was only a young colt to look at, or a new litter of pigs! And so you think to frighten me, Peter Gill! You’ve been doing the same thing every Easter, and every harvest, these five-and-twenty years! I can only say I wish you had kept your threat long ago, and the property wouldn’t have as many tumble-down cabins and ruined fences as it has now, and my rent-roll, too, wouldn’t have been the worse. I don’t believe there’s a man in Ireland more cruelly robbed than myself. There isn’t an estate in the county has not risen in value except my own! There’s not a landed gentleman hasn’t laid by money in the barony but myself, and if you were to believe the newspapers, I’m the hardest landlord in the province of Leinster. Is that Mickey Doolan there? Mickey!’ cried he, opening the window, ‘did you see Miss Kearney anywhere about?’

‘Yes, my lord. I see her coming up the Bog road with Miss O’Shea.’

‘The worse luck mine!’ muttered he, as he closed the window, and leaned his head on his hand.

CHAPTER XIX

AN UNWELCOME VISIT

If Mathew Kearney had been put to the question, he could not have concealed the fact that the human being he most feared and dreaded in life was his neighbour Miss Betty O’Shea.

With two years of seniority over him, Miss Betty had bullied him as a child, snubbed him as a youth, and opposed and sneered at him ever after; and to such an extent did her influence over his character extend, according to his own belief, that there was not a single good trait of his nature she had not thwarted by ridicule, nor a single evil temptation to which he had yielded that had not come out of sheer opposition to that lady’s dictation.

Malevolent people, indeed, had said that Mathew Kearney had once had matrimonial designs on Miss Betty, or rather, on that snug place and nice property called ‘O’Shea’s Barn,’ of which she was sole heiress; but he most stoutly declared this story to be groundless, and in a forcible manner asseverated that had he been Robinson Crusoe and Miss Betty the only inhabitant of the island with him, he would have lived and died in celibacy.

Miss Betty, to give her the name by which she was best known, was no miracle of either tact or amiability, but she had certain qualities that could not be disparaged. She was a strict Catholic, charitable, in her own peculiar and imperious way, to the poor, very desirous to be strictly just and honest, and such a sure foe to everything that she thought pretension or humbug of any kind – which meant anything that did not square with her own habits – that she was perfectly intolerable to all who did not accept herself and her own mode of life as a model and an example.

Thus, a stout-bodied copper urn on the tea-table, a very uncouth jaunting-car, driven by an old man, whose only livery was a cockade, some very muddy port as a dinner wine, and whisky-punch afterwards on the brown mahogany, were so many articles of belief with her, to dissent from any of which was a downright heresy.

Thus, after Nina arrived at the castle, the appearance of napkins palpably affected her constitution; with the advent of finger-glasses she ceased her visits, and bluntly declined all invitations to dinner. That coffee and some indescribable liberties would follow, as postprandial excesses, she secretly imparted to Kate Kearney in a note, which concluded with the assurance that when the day of these enormities arrived, O’Shea’s Barn Would be open to her as a refuge and a sanctuary; ‘but not,’ added she, ‘with your cousin, for I’ll not let the hussy cross my doors.’

For months now this strict quarantine had lasted, and except for the interchange of some brief and very uninteresting notes, all intimacy had ceased between the two houses – a circumstance, I am loth to own, which was most ungallantly recorded every day after dinner by old Kearney, who drank ‘Miss Betty’s health, and long absence to her.’ It was then with no small astonishment Kate was overtaken in the avenue by Miss Betty on her old chestnut mare Judy, a small bog-boy mounted on the croup behind to act as groom; for in this way Paddy Walshe was accustomed to travel, without the slightest consciousness that he was not in strict conformity with the ways of Rotten Row and the ‘Bois.’

That there was nothing ‘stuck-up’ or pretentious about this mode of being accompanied by one’s groom – a proposition scarcely assailable – was Miss Betty’s declaration, delivered in a sort of challenge to the world. Indeed, certain ticklesome tendencies in Judy, particularly when touched with the heel, seemed to offer the strongest protest against the practice; for whenever pushed to any increase of speed or admonished in any way, the beast usually responded by a hoist of the haunches, which invariably compelled Paddy to clasp his mistress round the waist for safety – a situation which, however repugnant to maiden bashfulness, time, and perhaps necessity, had reconciled her to. At all events, poor Paddy’s terror would have been the amplest refutation of scandal, while the stern immobility of Miss Betty during the embrace would have silenced even malevolence.

On the present occasion, a sharp canter of several miles had reduced Judy to a very quiet and decorous pace, so that Paddy and his mistress sat almost back to back – a combination that only long habit enabled Kate to witness without laughing.

‘Are you alone up at the castle, dear?’ asked Miss Betty, as she rode along at her side; ‘or have you the house full of what the papers call “distinguished company”?’

‘We are quite alone, godmother. My brother is with us, but we have no strangers.’

‘I am glad of it. I’ve come over to “have it out” with your father, and it’s pleasant to know we shall be to ourselves.’

Now, as this announcement of having ‘it out’ conveyed to Kate’s mind nothing short of an open declaration of war, a day of reckoning on which Miss O’Shea would come prepared with a full indictment, and a resolution to prosecute to conviction, the poor girl shuddered at a prospect so certain to end in calamity.

‘Papa is very far from well, godmother,’ said she, in a mild way.

‘So they tell me in the town,’ said the other snappishly. ‘His brother magistrates said that the day he came in, about that supposed attack – the memorable search for arms – ’

‘Supposed attack! but, godmother, pray don’t imagine we had invented all that. I think you know me well enough and long enough to know – ’

‘To know that you would not have had a young scamp of a Castle aide-de-camp on a visit during your father’s absence, not to say anything about amusing your English visitor by shooting down your own tenantry.’

‘Will you listen to me for five minutes?’

‘No, not for three.’

‘Two, then – one even – one minute, godmother, will convince you how you wrong me.’

‘I won’t give you that. I didn’t come over about you nor your affairs. When the father makes a fool of himself, why wouldn’t the daughter? The whole country is laughing at him. His lordship indeed! a ruined estate and a tenantry in rags; and the only remedy, as Peter Gill tells me, raising the rents – raising the rents where every one is a pauper.’

‘What would you have him do, Miss O’Shea?’ said Kate, almost angrily.

‘I’ll tell you what I’d have him do. I’d have him rise of a morning before nine o’clock, and be out with his labourers at daybreak. I’d have him reform a whole lazy household of blackguards, good for nothing but waste and wickedness. I’d have him apprentice your brother to a decent trade or a light business. I’d have him declare he’d kick the first man that called him “My lord”; and for yourself, well, it’s no matter – ’

‘Yes, but it is, godmother, a great matter to me at least. What about myself?’

‘Well, I don’t wish to speak of it, but it just dropped out of my lips by accident; and perhaps, though not pleasant to talk about, it’s as well it was said and done with. I meant to tell your father that it must be all over between you and my nephew Gorman; that I won’t have him back here on leave as I intended. I know it didn’t go far, dear. There was none of what they call love in the case. You would probably have liked one another well enough at last; but I won’t have it, and it’s better we came to the right understanding at once.’

‘Your curb-chain is loose, godmother,’ said the girl, who now, pale as death and trembling all over, advanced to fasten the link.

‘I declare to the Lord, he’s asleep!’ said Miss Betty, as the wearied head of her page dropped heavily on her shoulder. ‘Take the curb off, dear, or I may lose it. Put it in your pocket for me, Kate; that is, if you wear a pocket.’

‘Of course I do, godmother. I carry very stout keys in it, too. Look at these.’

‘Ay, ay. I liked all that, once on a time, well enough, and used to think you’d be a good thrifty wife for a poor man; but with the viscount your father, and the young princess your first cousin, and the devil knows what of your fine brother, I believe the sooner we part good friends the better. Not but if you like my plan for you, I’ll be just as ready as ever to aid you.’

‘I have not heard the plan yet,’ said Kate faintly.

‘Just a nunnery, then – no more nor less than that. The “Sacred Heart” at Namur, or the Sisters of Mercy here at home in Bagot Street, I believe, if you like better – eh?’

‘It is soon to be able to make up one’s mind on such a point. I want a little time for this, godmother.’

‘You would not want time if your heart were in a holy work, Kate Kearney. It’s little time you’d be asking if I said, will you have Gorman O’Shea for a husband?’

‘There is such a thing as insult, Miss O’Shea, and no amount of long intimacy can license that.’

‘I ask your pardon, godchild. I wish you could know how sorry I feel.’

‘Say no more, godmother, say no more, I beseech you,’ cried Kate, and her tears now gushed forth, and relieved her almost bursting heart. ‘I’ll take this short path through the shrubbery, and be at the door before you,’ cried she, rushing away; while Miss Betty, with a sharp touch of the spur, provoked such a plunge as effectually awoke Paddy, and apprised him that his duties as groom were soon to be in request.

While earnestly assuring him that some changes in his diet should be speedily adopted against somnolency, Miss Betty rode briskly on, and reached the hall door.

‘I told you I should be first, godmother,’ said the girl; and the pleasant ring of her voice showed she had regained her spirits, or at least such self-control as enabled her to suppress her sorrow.