“Marry in haste,” says the adage, and we all know what occupation
leisure will bring with it; unhappily, my father was not to prove the
exception to the maxim. It was not that his wife was wanting in any
quality which can render married life happy; she was, on the contrary,
most rarely gifted with them all. She was young, beautiful, endowed with
excellent health and the very best of tempers. The charm of her manner
won every class with whom she came into contact. But--alas that
there should be a but!--she had been brought up in habits of the most
expensive kind. Living in royal palaces, waited on by troops of menials,
with costly equipages and splendid retinues ever at her command, only
mingling with those whose lives were devoted to pleasure and amusement,
conversant with no other themes than those which bore upon gayety and
dissipation, she was peculiarly unsuited to the wear and tear of a
social system which demanded fully as much of self-sacrifice as of
enjoyment. The long lessons my father would read to her of deference
to this one, patient endurance of that, how she was to submit to the
tiresome prosings of certain notorieties in respect of their
political or social eminence,--she certainly heard with most
exemplary resignation; but by no effort of her reason, nor, indeed, of
imagination, could she attain to the fact why any one should associate
with those distasteful to them, nor ever persuade herself that any
worldly distinction could possibly be worth having at such a price.
She was quite sure--indeed, her own experience proved it--“that the
world was full of pleasant people.” Beauty to gaze on and wit to listen
to, were certainly not difficult to be found; why, then, any one should
persist in denying themselves the enjoyment derivable from such sources
was as great a seeming absurdity as that of him who, turning his back on
the rare flowers of a conservatory, would go forth to make his bouquet
of the wild flowers and weeds of the roadside. Besides this, in the
world wherein she had lived, her own gifts were precisely those which
attracted most admiration and exerted most sway; and it was somewhat
hard to descend to a system where such a coinage was not accepted as
currency, but rather regarded as gilded counters, pretty to look at,
but, after all, a mere counterfeit money, unrecognized by the mint.
My father saw all this when it was too late; but he lost no time in vain
repinings. On the contrary, having taken a cottage in a secluded part
of North Wales, by way of passing the honeymoon in all the conventional
isolation that season is condemned to, he devoted himself to that
educational process at which I have hinted, and began to instil those
principles, to the difficulty of whose acquirement I have just alluded.
I believe that his life at this period was one of as much happiness as
ever is permitted to poor mortality in this world; so, at least, his
letters to his friends bespeak it. It may be even doubted if the little
diversities of taste and disposition between himself and my mother did
not heighten the sense of his enjoyment; they assuredly averted that
lassitude and ennui which are often the results of a connubial duet
unreasonably prolonged. I know, too, that my poor mother often looked
back to that place as to the very paradise of her existence. My father
had encouraged such magnificent impressions of his ancestral house
and demesne that he was obliged to make great efforts to sustain the
deception. An entire wing had to be built to complete the symmetry of
the mansion. The roof had also to be replaced by another, of more
costly construction. In the place of a stucco colonnade, one of
polished granite was to be erected. The whole of the furniture was to
be exchanged. Massive old cabinets and oaken chairs, handsome enough in
their way, were but ill-suited to ceilings of fretted gold, and walls
hung in the rich draperies of Lyons. The very mirrors, which had been
objects of intense admiration for their size and splendor, were now to
be discarded for others of more modern pretensions. The china bowls and
cups which for centuries had been regarded as very gems of virtu were
thrown indignantly aside, to make place for Sèvres vases and rich
groupings of pure Saxon. In fact, all the ordinary comforts and
characteristics of a country gentleman's house were abandoned for the
sumptuous and splendid furniture of a palace. To meet such expenses
large sums were raised on loan, and two of the richest mines on the
estate were heavily mortgaged. Of course it is needless to say that
preparations on such a scale of magnificence attracted a large share of
public attention. The newspapers duly chronicled the increasing splendor
of “Castle Carew.” Scarcely a ship arrived without some precious
consignment, either of pictures, marbles, or tapestries; and these
announcements were usually accompanied by some semi-mysterious paragraph
about the vast wealth of the owner, and the great accession of fortune
he had acquired by his marriage. On this latter point nothing was known,
beyond the fact that the lady was of an ancient ducal family of France,
of immense fortune and eminently beautiful. Even my father's most
intimate friends knew nothing beyond this; for, however strange it
may sound to our present-day notions, my father was ashamed of her
illegitimacy and rightly judged what would be the general opinion
of her acquaintances, should the fact become public. At last came the
eventful day of the landing in Ireland; and, certainly, nothing could be
more enthusiastic nor affectionate than the welcome that met them.
Personally, my father's popularity was very great; politically, he had
already secured many admirers, since, even in the few months of his
parliamentary life, he had distinguished himself on two or three
occasions. His tone was manly and independent; his appearance was
singularly prepossessing; and then, as he owned a large estate, and
spent his money freely, it would have been hard if such qualities had
not made him a favorite in Ireland.
It was almost a procession that accompanied him from the quay to the
great hotel of the Drogheda Arms, where they stopped to breakfast.
“I am glad to see you back amongst us, Carew!” said Joe Parsons, one of
my father's political advisers, a county member of great weight with the
Opposition. “We want every good and true man in his place just now.”
“Faith! we missed you sorely at the Curragh meetings, Watty,” cried a
sporting-looking young fellow, in “tops and leathers.” “No such thing as
a good handicap, nor a hurdle race for a finish, without you.”
“Harry deplores those pleasant evenings you used to spend at
three-handed whist, with himself and Dick Morgan,” said another,
laughing.
“And where's Dick?” asked my father, looking around him on every side.
“Poor Dick!” said the last speaker. “It's no fault of his that he 's not
here to shake your hand to-day. He was arrested about six weeks ago, on
some bills he passed to Fagan.”
“Old Tony alive still?” said my father, laughing. “And what was the
amount?” added he, in a whisper.
“A heavy figure,--above two thousand, I believe; but Tony would be right
glad to take five hundred.”
“And couldn't Dick's friends do that much for him?” asked my father,
half indignantly. “Why, when I left this, Dick was the very life of your
city. A dinner without him was a failure. Men would rather have met him
at the cover than seen the fox. His hearty face and his warm shake-hands
were enough to inspire jollity into a Quaker meeting.”
“All true, Watty; but there's been a general shipwreck of us all,
somehow. Where the money has gone, nobody knows; but every one seems out
at elbows. You are the only fellow the sun shines upon.”
“Make hay, then, when it does so,” said my father, laughing; and, taking
but his pocket-book, he scribbled a few lines on a leaf which he tore
out. “Give that to Dick, and tell him to come down and dine with us on
Friday. You'll join him. Quin and Parsons won't refuse me.--And what do
you say, Gervy Power? Can you spare a day from the tennis-court, or an
evening from piquet?--Jack Gore, I count upon you. Harvey Hepton will
drive you down, for I know you never can pay the post-boys.”
“Egad, they 're too well trained to expect it. The rascals always look
to me for a hint about the young horses at the Curragh, and, now and
then, I do throw a stray five-pound in their way.”
“We have not seen madam yet. Are we not to have that honor to-day?” said
Parsons.
“I believe not; she's somewhat tired. We had a stormy time of it,” said
my father, who rather hesitated about introducing his bachelor friends
to my mother without some little preparation.
Nor was the caution quite unreasonable. Their style and breeding
were totally unlike anything she had ever seen before. The tone of
familiarity they used towards each other was the very opposite to that
school of courtly distance which even the very nearest in blood or
kindred observed in her own country; and lastly, very few of those then
present understood anything of French; and my mother's English, at the
time I speak of, did not range beyond a few monosyllables, pronounced
with an accent that made them all but unintelligible.
“You'll have Kitty Dwyer to call upon you the moment she hears you 're
come,” said Quin.
“Charmed to see her, if she 'll do us that honor,” said my father,
laughing.
“You must have no common impudence, then, Watty,” said another; “you
certainly jilted her.”
“Nothing of the kind,” replied my father; “she it was who refused me.”
“Bother!” broke in an old squire, a certain Bob French of Frenchmount;
“Kitty refuse ten thousand a-year, and a good-looking fellow into the
bargain! Kitty's no fool; and she knows mankind just as well as she
knows horseflesh,--and, faix, that's not saying a trifle.”
“How is she looking?” asked my father, rather anxious to change the
topic.
“Just as you saw her last. She hurt her back at an ugly fence in
Kennedy's park, last winter; but she's all right again, and riding the
little black mare that killed Morrissy, as neatly as ever!”
“She's a fine dashing girl!” said my father.
“No, but she's a good girl,” said the old squire, who evidently admired
her greatly. “She rode eight miles of a dark night, three weeks ago, to
bring the doctor to old Hackett's wife, and it raining like a waterfall;
and she gave him two guineas for the job. Ay, faith, and maybe at the
same time, two guineas was two guineas to her.”
“Why, Mat Dwyer is not so hard-up as that comes to?” exclaimed my
father.
“Is n't he, faith? I don't believe he knows where to lay his hand on a
fifty-pound note this morning. The truth is, Walter, Mat ran himself out
for _you_.”
“For me! How do you mean for me?”
“Just because he thought you 'd marry Kitty. Oh! you need n't laugh.
There 's many more thought the same thing. You remember yourself that
you were never out of the house. You used to pretend that Bishop's-Lough
was a better cover than your own,--that it was more of a grass country
to ride over. Then, when summer came, you took to fishing, as if your
bread depended on it; and the devil a salmon you ever hooked.”
A roar of laughter from the surrounders showed how they relished the
confusion of my father's manner.
“Even all that will scarcely amount to an offer of marriage,” said he,
in half pique.
“Nobody said it would,” retorted the other; “but when you teach a girl
to risk her life, four days in the week, over the highest fences in a
hunting country,--when she gives up stitching and embroidery, to tying
flies and making brown hackles,--when she 'd rather drive a tandem than
sit quiet in a coach and four,--why, she's as good as spoiled for any
one else. 'Tis the same with women as with young horses,--every one
likes to break them in for himself. Some like a puller; others prefer a
light mouth; and there's more that would rather go along without having
to think at all, sure that, no matter how rough the road, there would be
neither a false step nor stumble in it.”
“And what's become of MacNaghten?” asked my father, anxious to change
the topic.
“Scheming, scheming, just the same as ever. I 'm sure I wonder he 's not
here to-day. May I never! if that's not his voice I hear on the stairs.
Talk of the devil--”
“And you're sure to see Dan MacNaghten,” cried my father; and the next
moment he was heartily shaking hands with a tall, handsome man who,
though barely thirty, was yet slightly bald on the top of the head. His
eyes were blue and large; their expression full of the joyous merriment
of a happy schoolboy,--a temperament that his voice and laugh fully
confirmed.
“Watty, boy, it 's as good as a day rule to have a look at you
again,” cried he. “There's not a man can fill your place when you 're
away,--devil a one.”
“There he goes,--there he goes!” muttered old French, with a sly wink at
the others.
“Ireland wasn't herself without you, my boy,” continued MacNaghten.
“We were obliged to put up with Tom Burke's harriers and old French's
claret; and the one has no more scent than the other has bouquet.”
French's face at this moment elicited such a roar of laughter as drowned
the remainder of the speech.
“'T was little time you had either to run with the one or drink the
other, Dan,” said he; “for you were snug in Kilmainham the whole of the
winter.”
“_Otium cum dignitate_,” said Dan. “I spent my evenings in drawing up a
bill for the better recovery of small debts.”
“How so, Dan?”
“Lending enough more, to bring the debtor into the superior
courts,--trying him for murder instead of manslaughter.”
“Faith, you'd do either if you were put to it,” said French, who merely
heard the words, without understanding the context.
Dan MacNaghten was now included in my father's invitation to Castle
Carew; and, after a few other allusions to past events and absent
friends, they all took their leave, and my father hastened to join his
bride.
“You thought them very noisy, my dear,” said my father, in reply to a
remark of hers. “They, I have no doubt, were perfectly astonished at
their excessive quietness,--an air of decorum only assumed because they
heard you were in the next room.”
“They were not afraid of me, I trust,” said she, smiling. “Not exactly
afraid,” said my father, with a very peculiar smile.