It was on the evening of the second day after Vyner’s departure that
Grenfell, never much given to anxieties about others, felt a certain
uneasiness, and sauntered down the glen, wondering what might have
detained him. He had not gone fully a mile, when he saw in the grey
twilight a man approaching; he hailed, and was answered in his friend’s
voice, “All right; it is I.”
“I was going to start the hue and cry, or whatever may represent that
institution here, after you, Vyner. Where have you been all this time?”
“As to the where, my friend, it would require a very different tongue
from yours and mine to say; Russian and Polish names are nothing in
comparison. As to the how I have been, is easier to answer--never
better; though with all due gratitude be it said, I have passed my time
in rather questionable company.”
“At least they recognised the rights of hospitality?”
“Arabs themselves were never more punctilious. My host was the
grandfather of our little friend the fairy queen, a man of nigh eighty,
who had been tried on two capital charges, and ought, I suspect, to have
been convicted on both. His friends, to the number of twenty odd, were
all Whiteboys, Ribbonmen, or whatever other name includes lawbreakers
of the first magnitude; and one, as handsome and frank-featured a
young fellow as ever you saw, who accompanied me to the lake side this
evening, had made his escape from Castlebar gaol when under sentence of
death, and actually went back to the town to witness the execution of
his cousins on the following Saturday, it being, as he said, the only
mark of affection he was able to show them.”
“I make you my compliment, as the French say, on your company. And the
women, what were they like?”
“I saw but two: an old hag that was brought down special to give an
opinion upon me from external traits, and pronounce whether I had the
colour of hair or eyes that indicated a tendency to bear witness against
my neighbour; the other was a sickly creature, bedridden though in the
prime of life, mother of little Katherine.”
“But explain how you could have prolonged your stay amongst such people.
What were you doing? what were you saying?”
“Doing? The whole day we walked the mountains. They led me by paths
known only to themselves over an immense mountain district, showing
me all that was noteworthy, and pointing out effects of scenery and
picturesque spots with a feeling and taste that amazed me. They used
no cant of art, none of that tricky phraseology, it is true, which we
accept as the vernacular of all landscape description; but in their wild
imagery and reckless imagination they gave names to the places which
showed how deeply objects of terror or beauty had appealed to them. Then
at nightfall we gathered close to the turf fire and the potato ‘kish,’ a
wide, open basket, which served as strainer and dish together. There
we supped, talked politics, religion, law, and a little literature--at
least so far as the Life of Freeny and the story of Moll Flanders enter
into biographical letters.”
“How I should like to have drawn a cordon of policemen round the party
and netted the whole.”
“You might like to have planned the campaign, but I’ll be sworn if you
had been favoured with a look at the company you’d never have led the
expedition.”
“What a traveller’s knack it is to exaggerate the war-paint of one’s
Indian friends,” said Grenfell, superciliously. “But here we are with
our supper waiting for us, and even Mr. ‘O’Rorke’s noble feast’ will
contrast favourably with your host’s.”
The meal ended, they seated themselves on the door-sill, looking
out into the still and starry night, and resumed the theme they were
discussing.
“I take it that you said you were a mere tourist rambling for pleasure?”
asked Grenfell.
“No, I told them I had come down to see the country, with some
intentions to make a purchase. It was not so easy to explain that I was
more eager to acquire a very beautiful and picturesque tract than a
very remunerative one, but they believed me at last--that is, they gave
credit to my sincerity at the cost of my shrewdness.” Grenfell nodded,
as though he agreed with them, and Vyner went on: “We were a full
house when I made my declaration--there were, I should say, six or
seven-and-twenty present--and they concurred in applauding the frankness
with which I spoke to them. A very old man, a venerable figure, whose
high forehead and white beard would have impressed me, perhaps, more
reverentially if I had not been told that he had been flogged by
John Beresford, in the year ‘98, for some cruel outrage he had
committed--this apart--he, however, complimented me highly on my
straightforwardness, and said that if others would do like me there
would be fewer disturbances about land; and the illustration he used
was this: ‘If you go into a fair to buy a horse, and you see a splendid
animal, strong-boned, well-ribbed, and powerful, with every promise of
speed and strength;--you are as well satisfied with his price as with
his perfections, but do your inquiries stop there?--not a bit of it. You
know well that he may be a capital hunter and a noble roadster, but you
want to learn what his temper is. All his fine qualities depend upon
this, for if he be unruly and unmanageable, to what purpose is his power
or his activity? It is precisely the same with a property: you may have
wood and water, arable land and lay, mines and meadows, and, with all
these, there may be a “temper” that renders them worthless. Landlords
won’t believe this; buyers won’t listen to it. They say, “Make out my
title clear and clean, and leave me to deal with it.” Men with money
in the bank, and who, because they can live anywhere, are chained to
nowhere, cannot understand the love of a poor labouring man to some
mud-hovel or some shealing, to a brook where he has paddled in boyhood,
to the mountain that he has seen from his earliest infancy.
They do not, cannot, conceive why poverty should sharpen any
susceptibilities--poverty, that can blunt so many--and they say, “Turn
him out. I’ll find a place for him elsewhere.” But that’s a mistake;
you might as well say you’d replace the child he has followed to the
churchyard. The man, in the very proportion of his destitution, has
bound up his heart with some half-dozen little objects that have, from
time and long usage, grown to be part of him. The monotony that wearies
the rich man is the luxury of the poor. To live where their fathers
lived, to see an unchanged world around them, to have few contrasts of
the present with the past, is their paradise------’”
“Where did you get all this?” broke in Grenfell. “From your friend of
the cat-o’-nine-tails?”
“Exactly. The words of wisdom were all his own, and, unlike the fate of
most wisdom, it was listened to. He showed me, in fact, that though the
Law might give possession, it would not ensure me one of the rights of
property: I might own, but not enjoy; I might have and hold, but neither
sow nor reap; I might walk over and shoot over, but with no privilege
to keep any other from doing the same, and that before I thought of
preserving the game, I should take some measures about preserving
myself. The man who enunciated these principles--for they were
principles--declared them calmly and dispassionately, not as sentiments
that conveyed anger or passion; far from it--he felt all the dignity of
a sage instructing ignorance. He was a great Saquem delivering the laws
of his tribe, and showing what had been their guides and directors
for centuries. I did, indeed, once, only once, venture upon a mild
remonstrance, that there were some things which a landlord possessed
for the betterment of those under him; that he might assist them in
many ways, and be the means of their advancement and prosperity; but he
demurred to this, and so did his followers. Their experience, they said,
did not confirm this: as a class, they had found landlords narrow-minded
and selfish, very ignorant of the people, and very indifferent to them.
They opined that, as an institution, landlordism had not succeeded, and
half hinted that it was a Saxon innovation that was brought over in
days of violence and oppression, and did not suit the conditions of the
country at present.”
“And you listened to these rascals coolly propounding such doctrines?”
“Yes; and so would you have done too, had you been in my place, my dear
George! A minority is never very truculent when the majority could pitch
it over a cliff without the slightest risk of being called to account
for it.”
“It would have pushed my patience hard, though.” “It would have been
your prudence, and not your patience, that you’d have consulted.”
“Well, I’ll not quarrel with the rogues if they have disabused you as to
the pleasures of Irish proprietorship; they’ve done you a good service,
but, I must say, I think their case a more hopeless one, now that I see
lawlessness is a system.”
“I don’t think you would if you talked with them! They were too
argumentative not to be open to conviction; too logical, with all their
prejudices, not to be approachable by reason. I was, all the time we
were talking, so impressed with this, that I could not help imagining
what a race so quick-sighted and intelligent might become when educated
and instructed. Take my word for it, George, Hodge will have no chance
against Paddy if he ever get book-learning.” A mocking laugh was
Grenfell’s answer.
“So satisfied am I of the truth of what I say, that I’m going to give a
proof of it.”
“What, going to set up a school in the wilds of Donegal!” “No. I’m going
to carry away that pretty child, and educate her with Ada.”
“You’ll not do anything so foolish, I trust!” “It is all settled, the
conditions arranged, the terms agreed to. I have given her grandfather
ten pounds for her outfit, some few things she needed, and as much more
to pay their journey over to Wales, for the old fellow, with a caution
that was creditable to him, wished to see the ladies to whom his child
was to be confided, and confer a little with them besides.”
“All your scheme for the property was absolute wisdom compared with
this!” “How so?”
“Where everything is so absurd one cannot decide what to ridicule.
Suppose you succeed--and it is what I by no means grant--what will you
do with her? You’ll give her the tastes, the accomplishments, and the
habits of a lady--to marry her to your gamekeeper or your gardener.
You’ll turn her brain with ten years of luxury--to make the whole of her
after life a dreary servitude. You’ll excite ambition, whose very least
evil will be bitter disappointment; and for what? To gratify a caprice,
to paint the moral of a vapid theory about Irish intelligence. No, no,
Vyner, don’t make such a blunder as this, and a serious blunder too;
for, amongst other pleasant contingencies, Paddy MacHackaway is sure to
call you to account some fine day: why you dared to do this, or omitted
to do that; and with all your respect for his reasoning qualities, he
sometimes expresses his sentiments with a bludgeon.”
“The thing is done, George, if you were to rail at it for a week. It is
done, and cannot be undone, even if I wished it.”
“But why not? What is easier than to send for this old rascal who has
so over-blarneyed you, and compromise the matter? A couple more of those
crisp ten-pounders that I must say you displayed before these creatures
with an unpardonable rashness--”
“Be it so,” broke in Vyner. “But let me tell you that they saw my
pocket-book full of them; they saw on the window-seat, where by chance
I had left it, a purse heavy with gold, and yet these poor fellows were
proof against the temptations; and it was the gaol-breaker himself who
carried my knapsack on my way back, which contained, as he knew, both
purse and pocket-book; so that against their honesty I’ll not listen to
a word.”
“Let them have all the virtues under the sun if you will; call them all
Arcadians. All I ask is that we should have no dealings with them. Send
off O’Rorke; let him bring this old fellow before me, and I’ll answer
for it that I settle the question at once.”
“No, no; my word is pledged, and I’ll not break it.”
“I don’t ask you to break it. What I propose is, that you should be
released from a very ill-judged contract, certain to turn out ill to all
it includes. Let me at least try if what I suggest is not practicable.”
“If the negotiation were to be carried on with men of your own rank and
condition, Grenfell, there is not any one to whom I would with, more
confidence confide it; but forgive me if I say that you’re not the man
to deal with these people.”
“Why not?”
“For a number of reasons. First of all, you are strongly prejudiced
against them; you are disposed to regard them as something little better
than savages----”
“Pardon me, there you are wrong--as not one whit better.”
“That’s enough, then; you shall be no envoy to them from me.”
“Well, I’ll knock under; I’ll agree to your high estimate of them,
intellectually and morally, only with that detractive element of poverty
which makes even clever men submissive, and occasionally squeezes
conscience into a compromise. You tell me they are very amenable to
reason; let me see if I agree with you. You assure me that with all
their seeming impulsiveness and headlong rashness they are eminently
calculating and forecasting. I want to see this. Bethink you what
a grand witness I shall be to the truth of your theory when I am
converted. Come, consent to send for this old fellow; make any pretext
you please for seeing him, so that I may have a quarter of an hour’s
talk with him.”
“To what end? You could scarcely address to him the arguments you have
just used to me----”
“Leave that to my discretion. I suspect, Vyner--mind, it is mere
suspicion--but I suspect that your Celtic friend will be far more
practical and business-like in his dealings with me than with you; that
his shrewdness will show him that I am a common-place man of the world,
not caring, nor indeed believing, in any great regeneration for Ireland,
and that all our intercourse must take the shape of a bargain.”
“I consent,” said Vyner; “but, I own, less from choice than necessity,
for time presses, and I find by a note I have just received that
M’Kinlay, my man of business, has arrived at Westport, and whatever we
decide on must be done at once.”
“If I’m not very much mistaken, Vyner, my negotiation will not take ten
minutes, and perhaps as many pounds, so that you may order whatever it
be that is to carry us hence, and I’ll guarantee to be ready.”
While Vyner hastened to give the necessary orders, Grenfell opened his
writing-desk, from which he took some bank-notes and gold, and thrust
them together in his pocket.