Kitabı oku: «The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago», sayfa 11

“What!” cried Mark, as his face crimsoned with passion. “Is this true? – are you sure of what you’re saying?”

“I’ll take the book an it,” said Kerry, solemnly.

“Well, Archy,” said the O’Donoghue, addressing his brother-in-law. “You are a good judge of these matters. Is this conduct on the part of our neighbour suitable or becoming? Was it exactly right and proper to send here for one, whose services we had taken the trouble to seek, and might much have needed besides? Should we not have been consulted, think you?”

“There’s not a poor farmer in the glen would not resent it!” cried Mark, passionately.

“Bide a wee, bide a wee,” said Sir Archy, cautiously, “we hae na heard a’ the tale yet. Roach may perhaps explain.”

“He had better not come here, to do so,” interrupted Mark, as he strode the room in passion; “he has a taste for hasty departures, and, by G – , I’ll help him to one; for out of that window he goes, as sure as my name is Mark.”

“‘Tis the way to serve him, divil a doubt,” chimed in Kerry, who was not sorry to think how agreeably he might thus be relieved from any legal difficulties.

“I am no seeking to excuse the man,” said Sir Archy, temperately. “It’s weel kenned we hae na muckle love for ane anither; but fair play is bonnie play.”

“I never heard a mean action yet, but there was a Scotch adage to warrant it,” muttered Mark, in a whisper inaudible by the rest.

“Its no’ improbable but that Sir Marmaduke Travers did ask if the Doctor could be spared, and it’s no’ impossible, either, that Roach took the answering the question in his ain hands.”

“I don’t think so,” broke in Mark; “the whole thing bears a different aspect. It smacks of English courtesy to an Irish kern.”

“By Jove, Mark is right,” said the O’Donoghue, whose prejudices, strengthened by poverty, too readily chimed in with any suspicion of intended insult.

“They were not long learning the game,” said Mark, bitterly; “they are, if I remember aright, scarce two months in the country, and, see, they treat us as ‘mere Irish’ already.

“Ye’r ower hasty, Mark. I hae na muckle respect for Roach, nor wad I vouch for his good breeding; but a gentleman, as this Sir Marmaduke’s note bespeaks him – .”

“What note? I never heard of it.”

“Oh! it was a polite kind of message, Mark, to say he would be obliged if I permitted him to pay his respects here. I forget to tell you of it.”

“Does the enemy desire a peep at the fortress, that he may calculate how long we can hold out?” said the youth, sternly.

“Begorra, with the boys from Ballyvourney and Inchigeela, we’ll howld the place agin the English army,” said Kerry, mistaking the figurative meaning of the speech; and he rubbed his hands with delight at the bare prospect of such a consummation.

Sir Archy turned an angry look towards him, and motioned with his hand for him to leave the room. Kerry closed the door after him, and for some minutes the silence was unbroken.

“What does it matter after all?” said the O’Donoghue, with a sigh. “It is a mere folly to care for these things, now. When the garment is worn and threadbare, one need scarce fret that the lace is a little tarnished.”

“True, sir, quite true; but you are not bound to forget or forgive him, who would strip it rudely off, even a day or an hour before its time.”

“There is na muckle good in drawing inferences from imaginary evils. Shadows are a’ bad enough; but they needna hae children and grandchildren; and so I’ll even take a cup o’ tea to the callant;” and thus, wise in practice and precept, Sir Archibald left the room, while O’Donoghue and Mark, already wearied of the theme, ceased to discuss it further.

CHAPTER XV. SOME OF THE PLEASURES OF PROPERTY

In the small, but most comfortable apartment of the Lodge, which in virtue of its book-shelves and smartly bound volumes was termed “the Study,” sat Sir Marmaduke Travers. Before him was a table covered with writing materials, books, pamphlets, prints, and drawings; his great arm-chair was the very ideal of lounging luxury, and in the soft carpet his slippered feet were almost hidden. Through the window at his right hand, an alley in the beech-wood opened a view of mountain scenery, it would have been difficult to equal in any country of Europe. In a word, it was a very charming little chamber, and might have excited the covetousness of those whose minds must minister to their maintenance, and who rarely pursue their toilsome task, save debarred from every sound and sight that might foster imagination. How almost invariably is this the case! Who has not seen, a hundred times over, some perfect little room, every detail of whose economy seemed devised to sweeten the labour of the mind, teeming with its many appliances for enjoyment, yet encouraging thought more certainly than ministering to luxury – with its cabinet pictures, its carvings, its antique armour, suggestive in turn of some passage in history, or some page in fiction; – who has not seen these devoted to the half hour lounge over a newspaper, or the tiresome examination of house expenditure with the steward, while he, whose mental flights were soaring midway ‘twixt earth and heaven, looked out from some gloomy and cobwebbed pane upon a forest of chimneys, surrounded by all the evils of poverty, and tortured by the daily conflict with necessity.

Here sat Sir Marmaduke, a great volume like a ledger open before him, in which, from time to time, he employed himself in making short memoranda. Directly in front of him stood, in an attitude of respectful attention, a man of about five-and-forty years of age, who, although dressed in an humble garb, had yet a look of something above the common; his features were homely, but intelligent, and though a quick sharp glance shot from his grey eye when he spoke, yet in his soft, smooth voice the words came forth with a measured calm, that served to indicate a patient and gentle disposition. His frame betokened strength, while his face was pale and colourless, and without the other indications of active health in his gait and walk, would have implied a delicacy of constitution. This was Sam Wylie the sub-agent – one whose history may be told in a few words: – His father had been a butler in the O’Donoghue house, where he died, leaving his son, a mere child, as a legacy to his master. The boy, however, did not turn out well; delinquencies of various kinds – theft among the number – were discovered against him; and after many, but ineffectual efforts, to reclaim him, he was turned off, and advised, as he wished to escape worse, to leave the county. He took the counsel, and did so; nor for many a year after was he seen or heard of. A report ran that he passed fourteen years in transportation; but however that might be, when he next appeared in Kerry, it was in the train of a civil engineer, come to make surveys of the county. His cleverness and skill in this occupation recommended him to the notice of Hemsworth, who soon after appointed him as bailiff, and, subsequently, sub-agent on the estate; and in this capacity he had now served about fifteen years, to the perfect satisfaction, and with the full confidence of his chief. Of his “antecedents,” Sir Marmaduke knew nothing; he was only aware of the implicit trust Hemsworth had in him, and his own brief experience perfectly concurred in the justice of the opinion. He certainly found him intelligent, and thoroughly well-informed on all connected with the property. When questioned, his answers were prompt, direct, and to the purpose; and to one of Sir Marmaduke’s business habits, this quality possessed merit of the highest order. If he had a fault with him, it was one he could readily pardon – a leniency towards the people – a desire to palliate their errors and extenuate their failings – and always to promise well for the future, even when the present looked least auspicious. His hearty concurrence with all the old baronet’s plans for improvement were also highly in his favour; and already Wylie was looked on as “a very acute fellow, and with really wonderful shrewdness for his station;” as if any of that acuteness or that shrewdness, so estimated, could have its growth in a more prolific soil, than in the heart and mind of one bred and reared among the people; who knew their habits, their tone of thinking, their manners, and their motives – not through any false medium of speculation and theory, but practically, innately, instinctively – who had not studied the peasantry like an algebraic formula, or a problem iu Euclid, but read them, as they sat beside their turf fires, in the smoke of their mud hovels, cowering from the cold of winter, and gathering around the scanty meal of potatoes – the only tribute they had not rendered to the landlord.

“Roger Sweeny,” said Sir Marmaduke – “Roger Sweeny complains of his distance from the bog; he cannot draw his turf so easily, as when he lived on that swamp below the lake; but I think the change ought to recompense him for the inconvenience.”

“He’s a Ballyvourney man, your honour,” said Sam, placidly, “and if you couldn’t bring the turf up to his door, and cut it for him, and stack it, and carry a creel of it inside, to make the fire, he’d not be content.”

“Oh, that’s it – is it?” said Sir Marmaduke, accepting an explanation he was far from thoroughly understanding. “Then here’s Jack Heffernan – what does this fellow mean by saying that a Berkshire pig is no good?”

“He only means, your honour, that he’s too good for the place, and wants better food than the rest of the family.”

“The man’s a fool, and must learn better. Lord Mudford told me that he never saw such an excellent breed, and his swine-herd is one of the most experienced fellows in England. Widow Mul – Mul – what?” said he, endeavouring to spell an unusually long name in the book before him – “Mulla – ”

“Mullahedert, your honour,” slipped in Wylie, “a very dacent crayture.”

“Then why won’t she keep those bee-hives; can’t she see what an excellent thing honey is in a house – if one of her children was sick, for instance?”

“True for you, sir,” said Sam, without the slightest change of feature. “It is wonderful how your honour can have the mind to think of these things – upon my word, it’s surprising.”

“Samuel M’Elroy refuses to drain the field – does he?”

“No, sir; but he says the praties isn’t worth digging out of dry ground, nor never does grow to any size. He’s a Ballyvourney man, too, sir.”

“Oh, is he?” said Sir Marmaduke, accepting this as a receipt in full for any degree of eccentricity.

“Shamus M’Gillicuddy – heavens what a name! This Shamus appears a very desperate fellow; he beat a man the other evening, coming back from the market.”

“It was only a neighbour, sir; they live fornint each other.”

“A neighbour! but bless my heart, that makes it worse.”

“Sure, sir, it was nothing to speak of; it was Darby Lenahan said your honour’s bull was a pride to the place, and Shamus said the O’Donoghue’s was a finer baste any day; and from one word they came to another, and the end of it was, Lenahan got a crack on the scull that laid him Quivering on the daisies.”

“Savage ruffian, that Shamus; I’ll keep a sharp eye on him.”

“Faix, and there’s no need – he’s a Ballyvourney man.”

The old baronet looked up from his large volume, and seemed for a moment undecided whether he should not ask the meaning of a phrase, which, occurring at every moment, appeared most perplexing in signification; but the thought that by doing so, he should confess his ignorance before the sub-agent, deterred him, and he resolved to leave the interpretation to time and his own ingenuity.

“What of this old fellow, who has the mill? – has he consented to have the overshot wheel?”

“He tried it on Tuesday, sir,” said Sam, with an almost imperceptible smile, “and the sluice gave way, and carried off the house and the end of the barn into the tail race. He’s gone in, to take an action again your honour for the damages.”

“Ungrateful rascal! I told him I’d be at the whole expense myself, and I explained the great saving of water the new wheel would ensure him.”

“True, indeed, sir; but as the stream never went dry for thirty years, the ould idiot thought it would last his time. Begorra, he had enough of water on Tuesday, anyhow.”

“He’s a Ballyvourney man, isn’t he?”

“He is sir,” replied Wylie, with the gravity of a judge.

Another temptation crossed Sir Marmaduke’s mind, but he withstood it, and went on —

“The mountain has then been divided as I ordered, has it?”

“Yes, sir; the lines were all marked out before Saturday.”

“Well, I suppose the people were pleased to know, that they have, each, their own separate pasturage?”

“Indeed, and, sir, I won’t tell you a lie – they are not; they’d rather it was the ould way still.”

“What, have I taken all this trouble for nothing then? – is it possible that they’d rather have their cattle straying wild about the country, than see them grazing peaceably on their own land?”

“That’s just it, sir; for, you see, when they had the mountain among them, they fed on what they could get; one, had maybe a flock of goats, another, maybe a sheep or two, a heifer, an ass, or a bullsheen.

“A what?”

“A little bull, your honour; and they didn’t mind if one had more nor another, nor where they went, for the place was their own; but now. that it is all marked out and divided, begorra, if a beast is got trespassing, out comes some one with a stick, and wallops him back again, and then the man that owns him, natural enough, would’nt see shame on his cow, or whatever it was, and that leads to a fight; and faix, there’s not a day now, but there’s blood spilt over the same boundaries.”

“They’re actually savages!” said Sir Marmaduke, as he threw his spectacles over his forehead, and dropped his pen from his fingers in mute amazement; “I never heard – I never read of such a people.”

“They’re Ballyvourney men,” chimed in Wylie, assentively.

“D – d – ”

Sir Marmaduke checked himself suddenly, for the idea flashed on him that he ought at least to know what he was cursing, and so he abstained from such a perilous course, and resumed his search in the big volume. Alas! his pursuit of information was not more successful as he proceeded: every moment disclosed some case, where, in his honest efforts to improve the condition of the people, from ignorance of their habits, from total unconsciousness of the social differences of two nations, essentially unlike, he discovered the failure of his plans, and unhesitatingly ascribed to the prejudices of the peasantry, what with more justice might have been charged against his own unskilfulness. He forgot that a people long neglected cannot at once be won back – that confidence is a plant of slow growth; but more than all, he lost sight of the fact, that to engraft the customs and wants of richer communities, upon a people sunk in poverty and want – to introduce among them new and improved modes of tillage – to inculcate notions which have taken ages to grow up to maturity, in more favoured lands, must be attended with failure and disappointment. On both sides the elements of success were wanting. The peasantry saw – for, however strange it may seem, through every phase of want and wretchedness their intelligence and apprehension suffer no impairment – they saw his anxiety to serve them, they believed him to be kind-hearted and well-wishing, but they knew him to be also wrong-headed and ignorant of the country, and what he gained on the score of good feeling, he lost on the score of good sense; and Paddy, however humble his lot, however hard his condition, has an innate reverence for ability, and can rarely feel attachment to the heart, where he has not felt respect for the head. It is not a pleasant confession to make, yet one might explain it without detriment to the character of the people, but assuredly, popularity in Ireland would seem to depend far more on intellectual resources, than on moral principle and rectitude. Romanism has fostered this feeling, so natural is it to the devotee to regard power and goodness as inseparable, and to associate the holiness of religion, with the sway and influence of the priesthood. If the tenantry regarded the landlord as a simple-hearted, crotchety old gentleman with no harm in him, the landlord believed them to be almost incurably sunk in barbarism and superstition. Their native courtesy in declining to accept suggestions they never meant to adopt, he looked on as duplicity; he could not understand that the matter-of-fact sternness of English expression has no parallel here; that politeness, as they understood it, has a claim, to which truth itself may be sacrificed; and he was ever accepting in a literal sense, what the people intended to be received with its accustomed qualification.

But a more detrimental result followed than even these: the truly well-conducted and respectable portion of the tenantry felt ashamed to adopt plans and notions they knew inapplicable and unsuited to their condition; they therefore stood aloof, and by their honest forbearance incurred the reproach of obstinacy and barbarism; while the idle, the lazy, and the profligate, became converts to any doctrine or class of opinion, which promised an easy life and the rich man’s favour. These, at first sight, found favour with him, as possessing more intelligence and tractibility than their neighbours, and for them, cottages were built, rents abated, improved stock introduced, and a hundred devices organized to make them an example for all imitation. Unhappily the conditions of the contract were misconceived: the people believed that all the landlord required was a patient endurance of his benevolence; they never reckoned on any reciprocity in duty; they never dreamed that a Swiss cottage cannot be left to the fortunes of a mud cabin; that stagnant pools before the door, weed-grown fields, and broken fences, harmonize ill with rural pailings, drill cultivation, and trim hedges. They took all they could get, but assuredly they never understood the obligation of repayment. They thought (not very unreasonably perhaps), “it’s the old gentleman’s hobby that we should adopt a number of habits and customs we were never used to – live in strange houses and work with strange tools. Be it so; we are willing to gratify him,” said they, “but let him pay for his whistle.”

He, on the other hand, thought they were greedily adopting what they only endured, and deemed all converts to his opinion who lived on his bounty. Hence, each morning presented an array of the most worthless, irreclaimable of the tenantry around his door, all eagerly seeking to be included in some new scheme of regeneration, by which they understood three meals a day and nothing to do.

How to play off these two distinct and very opposite classes, Mr. Sam Wylie knew to perfection; and while he made it appear that one portion of the tenantry whose rigid rejection of Sir Marmaduke’s doctrines proceeded from a sturdy spirit of self-confidence and independence, were a set of wild, irreclaimable savages; he softly insinuated his compliments on the success in other quarters, while, in his heart he well knew what results were about to happen.

“They’re here now, sir,” said Wylie, as he glanced through the window towards the lawn, where, with rigid punctuality Sir Marmaduke each morning held his levee; and where, indeed, a very strange and motley crowd appeared.

The old baronet threw up the sash, and as he did so, a general mar-mur of blessings and heavenly invocations met his ears – sounds, that if one were to judge from his brightening eye and beaming countenance, he relished well. No longer, however, as of old, suppliant, and entreating, with tremulous voice and shrinking gaze did they make their advances. These people were now enlisted in his army of “regenerators”; they were converts to the landlords manifold theories of improved agriculture, neat cottages, pig-styes, dove-cots, bee-hives, and heaven knows what other suggestive absurdity, ease and affluence ever devised to plate over the surface of rude and rugged misery.

“The Lord bless your honour every morning you rise, ‘tis the iligant little place ye gave me to live in. Musha, ‘tis happy and comfortable I do be every night, now, barrin’ that the slates does be falling betimes – bad luck to them for slates, one of them cut little Joe’s head this morning, and I brought him up for a bit of a plaster.”

This was the address of a stout, middle-aged woman, with a man’s great coat around her in lieu of a cloak.

“Slates falling – why doesn’t your husband fasten them on again? he said he was a handy fellow, and could do any thing about a house.”

“It was no lie then; Thady Morris is a good warrant for a job any day, and if it was thatch was on it – ”

“Thatch – why, woman, I’ll have no thatch; I don’t want the cabins burned down, nor will I have them the filthy hovels they used to be.”

“Why would your honour? – sure there’s rayson and sinse agin it,” was the chorus of all present, while the woman resumed —

“Well, he tried that same too, your honour, and if he did, by my sowl, it was worse for him, for when he seen the slates going off every minit with the wind, he put the harrow on the top – ”

“The harrow – put the harrow on the roof?”

“Just so – wasn’t it natural? But as sure as the wind riz, down came the harrow, and stript every dirty kippeen of a slate away with it.”

“So the roof is off,” said Sir Marmaduke with stifled rage.

“Tis as clean as my five fingers, the same rafters,” said she with unmoved gravity.

“This is too bad – Wylie, do you hear this?” said the old gentleman, with a face dark with passion.

“Aye,” chorused in some half dozen friends of the woman – “nothing stands the wind like the thatch.”

Wylie whispered some words to his master, and by a side gesture, motioned to the woman to take her departure. The hint was at once taken, and her place immediately filled by another. This was a short little old fellow, in yellow rags, his face concealed by a handkerchief, on removing which, he discovered a countenance that bore no earthly resemblance to that of a human being: the eyes were entirely concealed by swollen masses of cheek and eye-lid – the nose might have been eight noses – and the round immense lips, and the small aperture between, looked like the opening in a ballot-box.

“Who is this? – what’s the matter here?” said Sir Marmaduke, as he stared in mingled horror and astonishment at the object before him.

“Faix, ye may well ax,” said the little man, in a thick guttural voice. “Sorra one of the neighbours knew me this morning. I’m Tim M’Garrey, of the cross-roads.”

“What has happened to you then?” asked Sir Marmaduke, somewhat ruffled by the sturdy tone of the ragged fellow’s address.

“‘Tis your own doing, then – divil a less – you may be proud of your work.”

“My doing! – how do you dare to say so?”

“‘Tis no darin’ at all – ‘tis thrue, as I’m here. Them bloody beehives you made me take home wid me, I put them in a corner of the house, and by bad luck it was the pig’s corner, and, sorra bit, but she rooted them out, and upset them, and with that, the varmint fell upon us all, and it was two hours before we killed them – divil such a fight ever ye seen: Peggy had the beetle, and I the griddle, for flattening them agin the wall, and maybe we didn’t work hard, while the childer was roarin’ and bawlin’ for the bare life.”

“Gracious mercy, would this be credited? – could any man conceive barbarism like this?” cried Sir Marmaduke, as with uplifted hands he stood overwhelmed with amazement.

Wylie again whispered something, and again telegraphed to the applicant to move off; but the little man stood his ground and continued. “‘Twas a heifer you gave Tom Lenahan, and it’s a dhroll day, the M’Garrey’s warn’t as good as the Lenahans, to say we’d have nothing but bees, and them was to get a dacent baste!”

“Stand aside, sir,” said Sir Marmaduke; “Wylie has got my orders about you. Who is this?”

“Faix, me, sir – Andrew Maher. I’m come to give your honour the key – I couldn’t stop there any longer.”

“What! not stay in that comfortable house, with the neat shop I had built and stocked for you? What does this mean?”

“‘Tis just that, then, your honour – the house is a nate little place, and barrin’ the damp, and the little grate, that won’t burn turf at all, one might do well enough in it; but the shop is the divil entirely.”

“How so – what’s wrong about it?”

“Every thing’s wrong about it. First and foremost, your honour, the neighbours has no money; and though they might do mighty well for want of tobacco, and spirits, and bohea, and candles, and soap, and them trifles, as long as they never came near them, throth they couldn’t have them there fornint their noses, without wishing for a taste; and so one comes in for a pound of sugar, and another wants a ha’ porth of nails, or a piece of naygar-head, or an ounce of starch – and divil a word they have, but ‘put it in the book, Andy.’ By my conscience, it’s a quare book would hould it all.”

“But they’ll pay in time – they’ll pay when they sell the crops.”

“Bother! I ax yer honour’s pardon – I was manin’ they’d see me far enough first. Sure, when they go to market, they’ll have the rint, and the tithe, and the taxes; and when that’s done, and they get a sack of seed potatoes for next year, I’d like to know where’s the money that’s to come to me?”

“Is this true, Wylie? – are they as poor as this?” asked Sir Marmaduke.

Wylie’s answer was still a whispered one.

“Well,” said Andy, with a sigh, “there’s the key any way. I’d rather be tachin’ the gaffers again, than be keeping the same shop.”

These complaints were followed by others, differing in kind and complexion, but all, agreeing in the violence with which they were urged, and all, inveighing against “the improvements” Sir Marmaduke was so interested in carrying forward. To hear them, you would suppose that the grievances suggested by poverty and want, were more in unison with comfort and enjoyment, than all the appliances wealth can bestow: and that the privations to which habit has inured us, are sources of greater happiness, than we often feel in the use of unrestricted liberty.

Far from finding any contented, Sir Marmaduke only saw a few among the number, willing to endure his bounties, as the means of obtaining other concessions they desired more ardently. They would keep their cabins clean, if any thing was to be made by it: they’d weed their potatoes, if Sir Marmaduke would only offer a price for the weeds. In fact, they were ready to engage in any arduous pursuit of cleanliness, decency, and propriety, but it must be for a consideration. Otherwise, they saw no reason for encountering labour, which brought no requital; and the real benefits offered to them, came so often associated with newfangled and absurd innovations, that, both became involved in the same disgrace, and both sunk in the same ridicule together. These were the refuse of the tenantry; for we have seen that the independent feeling of the better class held them aloof from all the schemes of “improvement,” which the others, by participating in, contaminated.

Sir Marmaduke might, then, be pardoned, if he felt some sinking of the heart at his failure; and, although encouraged by his daughter to persevere in his plan to the end, more than once he was on the brink of abandoning the field in discomfiture, and confessing that the game was above his skill. Had he but taken one-half the pains to learn something of national character, that he bestowed on his absurd efforts to fashion it to his liking, his success might have been different. He would, at least, have known how to distinguish between the really deserving, and the unworthy recipients of his bounty – between the honest and independent peasant, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, and the miserable dependant, only seeking a life of indolence, at any sacrifice of truth or character; and even this knowledge, small as it may seem, will go far in appreciating the difficulties which attend all attempts at Irish social improvement, and explain much of the success or failure observable in different parts of the country. But Sir Marmaduke fell into the invariable error of his countrymen – he first suffered himself to be led captive, by “blarney,” and when heartily sick of the deceitfulness and trickery of those who employed it, coolly sat down with the conviction, that there was no truth in the land.