Three weeks rolled over,--an interval not without its share of interest
for the inhabitants of the little village of Leenane, since on one
morning Mr. Craggs had made his appearance on his way to Clifden, and
after an absence of two days returned to the Castle. The subject for
popular discussion and surmise had not yet declined, when a boat was
seen to leave Glencore, heavily laden with trunks and travelling
gear; and as she neared the land, the “lord” was detected amongst the
passengers, looking very ill,--almost dying; he passed up the little
street of the village, scarcely noticing the uncovered heads which
saluted him respectfully. Indeed, he scarcely lifted up his eyes, and,
as the acute observers remarked, never once turned a glance towards the
opposite shore, where the Castle stood.
He had not reached the end of the village, when a chaise with four
horses arrived at the spot. No time was lost in arranging the trunks
and portmanteaus, and Lord Glencore sat moodily on a bank, listlessly
regarding what went forward. At length Craggs came up, and, touching his
cap in military fashion, announced all was ready.
Lord Glencore arose slowly, and looked languidly around him; his
features wore a mingled expression of weariness and anxiety, like one
not fully awakened from an oppressive dream. He turned his eyes on the
people, who at a respectful distance stood around, and in a voice of
peculiar melancholy said, “Good-bye.”
“A good journey to you, my Lord, and safe back again to us,” cried a
number together.
“Eh--what--what was that?” cried he, suddenly; and the tones were shrill
and discordant in which he spoke.
A warning gesture from Craggs imposed silence on the crowd, and not a
word was uttered.
“I thought they said something about coming back again,” muttered
Glencore, gloomily.
“They were wishing you a good journey, my Lord,” replied Craggs.
“Oh, that was it, was it?” And so saying, with bent-down head he walked
feebly forward and entered the carriage. Craggs was speedily on the box,
and the next moment they were away.
It is no part of our task to dwell on the sage speculations and wise
surmises of the village on this event. They had not, it is true, much
“evidence” before them, but they were hardy guessers, and there was very
little within the limits of possibility which they did not summon to the
aid of their imaginations. All, however, were tolerably agreed upon one
point,--that to leave the place while the young lord was still unable
to quit his bed, and too weak to sit up, was unnatural and unfeeling;
traits which, “after all,” they thought “not very surprising, since the
likes of them lords never cared for anybody.”
Colonel Harcourt still remained at Glencore, and under his rigid
sway the strictest blockade of the coast was maintained, nor was any
intercourse whatever permitted with the village. A boat from the Castle,
meeting another from Leenane, half way in the lough, received the
letters and whatever other resources the village supplied. All was done
with the rigid exactness of a quarantine regulation; and if the mainland
had been scourged with plague, stricter measures of exclusion could
scarcely have been enforced.
In comparison with the present occupant of the Castle, the late one was
a model of amiability; and the village, as is the wont in the case, now
discovered a vast number of good qualities in the “lord,” when they had
lost him. After a while, however, the guesses, the speculations, and
the comparisons all died away, and the Castle of Glencore was as much
dreamland to their imaginations as, seen across the lough in the dim
twilight of an autumn evening, its towers might have appeared to their
eyes.
It was about a month after Lord Glencore's departure, of a fine, soft
evening in summer, Billy Traynor suddenly appeared in the village. Billy
was one of a class who, whatever their rank in life, are always what
Coleridge would have called “noticeable men.” He was soon, therefore,
surrounded with a knot of eager and inquiring friends, all solicitous to
know something of the life he was leading, what they were doing “beyant
at the Castle.”
“It's a mighty quiet studious kind of life,” said Billy, “but agrees
with me wonderfully; for I may say that until now I never was able
to give my 'janius' fair play. Professional life is the ruin of the
student; and being always obleeged to be thinkin' of the bags destroyed
my taste for letters.” A grin of self-approval at his own witticism
closed this speech.
“But is it true, Billy, the lord is going to break up house entirely,
and not come back here?” asked Peter Slevin, the sacristan, whose rank
and station warranted his assuming the task of cross-questioner.
“There 's various ways of breakin' up a house,” said Billy. “Ye may
do so in a moral sinse, or in a physical sinse; you may obliterate, or
extinguish, or, without going so far, you may simply obfuscate,--do you
perceave?”
“Yes!” said the sacristan, on whom every eye was now bent, to see if he
was able to follow subtleties that had outwitted the rest.
“And whin I say _obfuscate_,” resumed Billy, “I open a question of
disputed etymology, bekase tho' Lucretius thinks the word _obfuscator_
original, there's many supposes it comes from _ob_ and _fucus_, the
dye the ancients used in their wool, as we find in Horace, _lana fuco
medicata_; while Cicero employs it in another sense, and says, _facere
fucum_, which is as much as to say, humbuggin' somebody,--do ye mind?”
“Begorra, he might guess that anyhow!” muttered a shrewd little tailor,
with a significance that provoked hearty laughter.
“And now,” continued Billy, with an air of triumph, “we'll proceed to
the next point.”
“Ye needn't trouble yerself then,” said Terry Lynch, “for Peter has gone
home.”
And so, to the amusement of the meeting, it turned out to be the case;
the sacristan had retired from the controversy. “Come in here to Mrs.
Moore's, Billy, and take a glass with us,” said Terry; “it isn't often
we see you in these parts.”
“If the honorable company will graciously vouchsafe and condescind
to let me trate them to a half-gallon,” said Billy, “it will be the
proudest event of my terrestrial existence.”
The proposition was received with a cordial enthusiasm, flattering to
all concerned; and in a few minutes after, Billy Traynor sat at the head
of a long table in the neat parlor of “The Griddle,” with a company of
some fifteen or sixteen very convivially disposed friends around him.
“If I was Cæsar, or Lucretius, or Nebuchadnezzar, I couldn't be
prouder,” said Billy, as he looked down the board. “And let moralists
talk as they will, there's a beautiful expansion of sentiment, there's a
fine genial overflowin' of the heart, in gatherin's like this, where we
mingle our feelin's and our philosophy; and our love and our learning
walk hand in hand like brothers--pass the sperits, Mr. Shea. If we look
to the ancient writers, what do we see!--Lemons! bring in some lemons,
Mickey.--What do we see, I say, but that the very highest enjoyment
of the haythen gods was--Hot wather! why won't they send in more hot
wather?”
“Begorra, if I was a haythen god, I 'd like a little whisky in it,”
muttered Terry, dryly.
“Where was I?” asked Billy, a little disconcerted by this sally, and the
laugh it excited. “I was expatiatin' upon celestial convivialities. The
_nodes coenoeque deum_,--them elegant hospitalities where wisdom was
moistened with nectar, and wit washed down with ambrosia. It is not, by
coorse, to be expected,” continued he, modestly, “that we mere mortials
can compete with them elegant refections. But, as Ovid says, we can at
least _diem jucundam decipere_.”
The unknown tongue had now restored to Billy all the reverence and
respect of his auditory, and he continued to expatiate very eloquently
on the wholesome advantages to be derived from convivial intercourse,
both amongst gods and men; rather slyly intimating that either on the
score of the fluids, or the conversation, his own leanings lay towards
“the humanities.”
“For, after all,” said he, “'tis our own wakenesses is often the
source of our most refined enjoyments. No, Mrs. Cassidy, ye need n't
be blushin'. I 'm considerin' my subject in a high ethnological and
metaphysical sinse.” Mrs. Cassidy's confusion, and the mirth it excited,
here interrupted the orator.
“The meeting is never tired of hearin' you, Billy,” said Terry Lynch;
“but if it was plazin' to ye to give us a song, we'd enjoy it greatly.”
“Ah!” said Billy, with a sigh, “I have taken my partin' kiss with the
Muses; _non mihi licet increpare digitis lyram_:--
“'No more to feel poetic fire,
No more to touch the soundin' lyre;
But wiser coorses to begin,
I now forsake my violin.'”
An honest outburst of regret and sorrow broke from the assembly, who
eagerly pressed for an explanation of this calamitous change.
“The thing is this,” said Billy: “if a man is a creature of mere
leisure and amusement, the fine arts--and by the fine arts I mean music,
paintin', and the ladies--is an elegant and very refined subject of
cultivation; but when you raise your cerebrial faculties to grander and
loftier considerations, to explore the difficult ragions of polemic
or political truth, to investigate the subtleties of the schools, and
penetrate the mysteries of science, then, take my word for it, the fine
arts is just snares,--devil a more than snares! And whether it is soft
sounds seduces you, or elegant tints, or the union of both,--women, I
mane,--you 'll never arrive at anything great or tri-um-phant till you
wane yourself away from the likes of them vanities. Look at the haythen
mythology; consider for a moment who is the chap that represents
Music,--a lame blackguard, with an ugly face, they call Pan. Ay, indeed,
Pan! If you wanted to see what respect they had for the art, it's easy
enough to guess, when this crayture represints it; and as to Paintin',
on my conscience, they have n't a god at all that ever took to the
brush.--Pass up the sperits, Mickey,” said he, somewhat blown and out of
breath by this effort. “Maybe,” said he, “I'm wearin' you.”
“No, no, no,” loudly responded the meeting.
“Maybe I'm imposin' too much of personal details on the house,” added
he, pompously.
“Not at all; never a bit,” cried the company.
“Because,” resumed he, slowly, “if I did so, I 'd have at least the
excuse of say in', like the great Pitt, 'These may be my last words from
this place.'”
An unfeigned murmur of sorrow ran through the meeting, and he resumed:--
“Ay, ladies and gintlemin, Billy Traynor is takin' his 'farewell
benefit;' he's not humbuggin'. I 'm not like them chaps that's always
positively goin', but stays on at the unanimous request of the whole
world. No; I'm really goin' to leave you.”
“What for? Where to, Billy?” broke from a number of voices together.
“I 'll tell ye,” said he,--“at least so far as I can tell; because it
would n't be right nor decent to 'print the whole of the papers for
the house,' as they say in parliamint. I 'm going abroad with the young
lord; we are going to improve our minds, and cultivate our janiuses, by
study and foreign travel. We are first to settle in Germany, where we
're to enter a University, and commince a coorse of modern tongues,
French, Sweadish, and Spanish; imbibin' at the same time a smatterin' of
science, such as chemistry, conchology, and the use of the globes.”
“Oh dear! oh dear!” murmured the meeting, in wonder and admiration.
“I 'm not goin' to say that we 'll neglect mechanics, metaphysics, and
astrology; for we mane to be cosmonopolists in knowledge. As for myself,
ladies and gintlemin, it's a proud day that sees me standin' here to
say these words. I, that was ragged, without a shoe to my foot,--without
breeches,--never mind, I was, as the poet says, _nudus nummis ac
vestimentis_,--
“'I have n't sixpence in my pack,
I have n't small clothes to my back.'
carryin' the bag many a weary mile, through sleet and snow, for six
pounds tin per annum, and no pinsion for wounds or superannuation; and
now I 'm to be--it is n't easy to say what--to the young lord a spacies
of humble companion,--not maniai, do you mind, nothing manial; what
the Latins called a __famulus, which was quite a different thing from
a _servus_. The former bein' a kind of domestic adviser, a
deputy-assistant, monitor-general, as a body might say. There, now, if
I discoorsed for a month, I could n't tell you more about myself and my
future prospects. I own to you that I 'm proud of my good luck, and I
would n't exchange it to be Emperor of Jamaica, or King of the Bahamia
Islands.”
If we have been prolix in our office of reporter to Billy Traynor,
our excuse is that his discourse will have contributed so far to the
reader's enlightenment as to save us the task of recapitulation. At the
same time, it is but justice to the accomplished orator that we should
say we have given but the most meagre outline of an address which, to
use the newspaper phrase, “occupied three hours in the delivery.” The
truth was, Billy was in vein; the listeners were patient, the punch
strong: nor is it every speaker who has had the good fortune of such
happy accessories.