THE TWO HEIRESSES
Francis John Mountmorris O’Kelly, Lord Viscount Ballindine, was
twenty-four years of age when he came into possession of the Ballindine
property, and succeeded to an Irish peerage as the third viscount; and
he is now twenty-six, at this time of O’Connell’s trial. The head of
the family had for many years back been styled “The O’Kelly”, and had
enjoyed much more local influence under that denomination than their
descendants had possessed, since they had obtained a more substantial
though not a more respected title. The O’Kellys had possessed large
tracts of not very good land, chiefly in County Roscommon, but partly
in Mayo and Galway. Their property had extended from Dunmore nearly to
Roscommon, and again on the other side to Castlerea and Ballyhaunis.
But this had been in their palmy days, long, long ago. When the
government, in consideration of past services, in the year 1800,
converted “the O’Kelly” into Viscount Ballindine, the family property
consisted of the greater portion of the land lying between the villages
of Dunmore and Ballindine. Their old residence, which the peer still
kept up, was called Kelly’s Court, and is situated in that corner of
County Roscommnon which runs up between Mayo and Galway.
The first lord lived long enough to regret his change of title, and to
lament the increased expenditure with which he had thought it necessary
to accompany his more elevated rank. His son succeeded, and showed in
his character much more of the new-fangled viscount than of the ancient
O’Kelly. His whole long life was passed in hovering about the English
Court. From the time of his father’s death, he never once put his foot
in Ireland. He had been appointed, at different times from his youth
upwards, Page, Gentleman in Waiting, Usher of the Black Rod, Deputy
Groom of the Stole, Chief Equerry to the Princess Royal, (which
appointment only lasted till the princess was five years old), Lord
Gold Stick, Keeper of the Royal Robes; till, at last, he had culminated
for ten halcyon years in a Lord of the Bedchamber. In the latter
portion of his life he had grown too old for this, and it was reported
at Ballindine, Dunmore, and Kelly’s Court,—with how much truth I don’t
know,—that, since her Majesty’s accession, he had been joined with the
spinster sister of a Scotch Marquis, and an antiquated English
Countess, in the custody of the laces belonging to the Queen Dowager.
This nobleman, publicly useful as his life had no doubt been, had done
little for his own tenants, or his own property. On his father’s death,
he had succeeded to about three thousand a-year, and he left about one;
and he would have spent or mortgaged this, had he not, on his marriage,
put it beyond his own power to do so. It was not only by thriftless
extravagance that he thus destroyed a property which, with care, and
without extortion, would have doubled its value in the thirty-five
years during which it was in his hands; but he had been afraid to come
to Ireland, and had been duped by his agent. When he came to the title,
Simeon Lynch had been recommended to him as a fit person to manage his
property, and look after his interests; and Simeon had managed it well
in that manner most conducive to the prosperity of the person he loved
best in the world; and that was himself. When large tracts of land fell
out of lease, Sim had represented that tenants could not be found—that
the land was not worth cultivating—that the country was in a state
which prevented the possibility of letting; and, ultimately put himself
into possession, with a lease for ever, at a rent varying from half a
crown to five shillings an acre.
The courtier lord had one son, of whom he made a soldier, but who never
rose to a higher rank than that of Captain. About a dozen years before
the date of my story, the Honourable Captain O’Kelly, after numerous
quarrels with the Right Honourable Lord of the Bedchamber, had, at
last, come to some family settlement with him; and, having obtained the
power of managing the property himself, came over to live at his
paternal residence of Kelly’s Court.
A very sorry kind of Court he found it,—neglected, dirty, and out of
repair. One of the first retainers whom he met was Jack Kelly, the
family fool. Jack was not such a fool as those who, of yore, were
valued appendages to noble English establishments. He resembled them in
nothing but his occasional wit. He was a dirty, barefooted, unshorn,
ragged ruffian, who ate potatoes in the kitchen of the Court, and had
never done a day’s work in his life. Such as he was, however, he was
presented to Captain O’Kelly, as “his honour the masther’s fool.”
“So, you’re my fool, Jack, are ye?” said the Captain.
“Faix, I war the lord’s fool ance; but I’ll no be anybody’s fool but
Sim Lynch’s, now. I and the lord are both Sim’s fools now. Not but I’m
the first of the two, for I’d never be fool enough to give away all my
land, av’ my father’d been wise enough to lave me any.”
Captain O’Kelly soon found out the manner in which the agent had
managed his father’s affairs. Simeon Lynch was dismissed, and
proceedings at common law were taken against him, to break such of the
leases as were thought, by clever attorneys, to have the ghost of a
flaw in them. Money was borrowed from a Dublin house, for the purpose
of carrying on the suit, paying off debts, and making Kelly’s Court
habitable; and the estate was put into their hands. Simeon Lynch built
himself a large staring house at Dunmore, defended his leases, set up
for a country gentleman on his own account, and sent his only son,
Barry, to Eton,—merely because young O’Kelly was also there, and he was
determined to show, that he was as rich and ambitious as the lord’s
family, whom he had done so much to ruin.
Kelly’s Court was restored to such respectability as could ever belong
to so ugly a place. It was a large red stone mansion, standing in a
demesne of very poor ground, ungifted by nature with any beauty, and
but little assisted by cultivation or improvement. A belt of
bald-looking firs ran round the demesne inside the dilapidated wall;
but this was hardly sufficient to relieve the barren aspect of the
locality. Fine trees there were none, and the race of O’Kellys had
never been great gardeners.
Captain O’Kelly was a man of more practical sense, or of better
education, than most of his family, and he did do a good deal to
humanise the place. He planted, tilled, manured, and improved; he
imported rose-trees and strawberry-plants, and civilised Kelly’s Court
a little. But his reign was not long. He died about five years after he
had begun his career as a country gentleman, leaving a widow and two
daughters in Ireland; a son at school at Eton; and an expensive
lawsuit, with numerous ramifications, all unsettled.
Francis, the son, went to Eton and Oxford, was presented at Court by
his grandfather, and came back to Ireland at twenty-two, to idle away
his time till the old lord should die. Till this occurred, he could
neither call himself the master of the place, nor touch the rents. In
the meantime, the lawsuits were dropped, both parties having seriously
injured their resources, without either of them obtaining any benefit.
Barry Lynch was recalled from his English education, where he had not
shown off to any great credit; and both he and his father were obliged
to sit down prepared to make the best show they could on eight hundred
pounds a-year, and to wage an underhand internecine war with the
O’Kellys.
Simeon and his son, however, did not live altogether alone. Anastasia
Lynch was Barry’s sister, and older than him by about ten years. Their
mother had been a Roman Catholic, whereas Sim was a Protestant; and, in
consequence, the daughter had been brought up in the mother’s, and the
son in the father’s religion. When this mother died, Simeon, no doubt
out of respect to the memory of the departed, tried hard to induce his
daughter to prove her religious zeal, and enter a nunnery; but this,
Anty, though in most things a docile creature, absolutely refused to
do. Her father advised, implored, and threatened; but in vain; and the
poor girl became a great thorn in the side of both father and son. She
had neither beauty, talent, nor attraction, to get her a husband; and
her father was determined not to encumber his already diminished
property with such a fortune as would make her on that ground
acceptable to any respectable suitor.
Poor Anty led a miserable life, associating neither with superiors nor
inferiors, and her own position was not sufficiently declared to enable
her to have any equals. She was slighted by her father and the
servants, and bullied by her brother; and was only just enabled, by
humble, unpresuming disposition, to carry on her tedious life from year
to year without grumbling.
In the meantime, the _ci-devant_ [9] Black Rod, Gold Stick, Royal
Equerry, and Lord of the Bedchamber, was called away from his robes and
his finery, to give an account of the manner in which he had renounced
the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; and Frank became Lord
Ballindine, with, as I have before said, an honourable mother, two
sisters, a large red house, and a thousand a-year. He was not at all a
man after the pattern of his grandfather, but he appeared as little
likely to redeem the old family acres. He seemed to be a reviving chip
of the old block of the O’Kellys. During the two years he had been
living at Kelly’s Court as Frank O’Kelly, he had won the hearts of all
the tenants—of all those who would have been tenants if the property
had not been sold, and who still looked up to him as their “raal young
masther”—and of the whole country round. The “thrue dhrop of the ould
blood”, was in his veins; and, whatever faults he might have, he wasn’t
likely to waste his time and his cash with furs, laces, and hangings.
This was a great comfort to the neighbourhood, which had learned
heartily to despise the name of Lord Ballindine; and Frank was
encouraged in shooting, hunting, racing—in preparing to be a thorough
Irish gentleman, and in determining to make good the prophecies of his
friends, that he would be, at last, one more “raal O’Kelly to brighten
the counthry.”
And if he could have continued to be Frank O’Kelly, or even “the
O’Kelly”, he would probably have done well enough, for he was fond of
his mother and sisters, and he might have continued to hunt, shoot, and
farm on his remaining property without further encroaching on it. But
the title was sure to be his ruin. When he felt himself to be a lord,
he could not be content with the simple life of a country gentleman;
or, at any rate, without taking the lead in the country. So, as soon as
the old man was buried, he bought a pack of harriers, and despatched a
couple of race-horses to the skilful hands of old Jack Igoe, the
Curragh trainer.
Frank was a very handsome fellow, full six feet high, with black hair,
and jet-black silky whiskers, meeting under his chin;—the men said he
dyed them, and the women declared he did not. I am inclined, myself, to
think he must have done so, they were so very black. He had an eye like
a hawk, round, bright, and bold; a mouth and chin almost too well
formed for a man; and that kind of broad forehead which conveys rather
the idea of a generous, kind, open-hearted disposition, than of a deep
mind or a commanding intellect.
Frank was a very handsome fellow, and he knew it; and when he commenced
so many ill-authorised expenses immediately on his grandfather’s death,
he consoled himself with the idea, that with his person and rank, he
would soon be able, by some happy matrimonial speculation, to make up
for what he wanted in wealth. And he had not been long his own master,
before he met with the lady to whom he destined the honour of doing so.
He had, however, not properly considered his own disposition, when he
determined upon looking out for great wealth; and on disregarding other
qualifications in his bride, so that he obtained that in sufficient
quantity. He absolutely fell in love with Fanny Wyndham, though her
twenty thousand pounds was felt by him to be hardly enough to excuse
him in doing so,—certainly not enough to make his doing so an
accomplishment of his prudential resolutions. What would twenty
thousand pounds do towards clearing the O’Kelly property, and
establishing himself in a manner and style fitting for a Lord
Ballindine! However, he did propose to her, was accepted, and the
match, after many difficulties, was acceded to by the lady’s guardian,
the Earl of Cashel. It was stipulated, however, that the marriage
should not take place till the lady was of age; and at the time of the
bargain, she wanted twelve months of that period of universal
discretion. Lord Cashel had added, in his prosy, sensible, aristocratic
lecture on the subject to Lord Ballindine, that he trusted that, during
the interval, considering their united limited income, his lordship
would see the wisdom of giving up his hounds, or at any rate of
withdrawing from the turf.
Frank pooh-poohed at the hounds, said that horses cost nothing in
Connaught, and dogs less, and that he could not well do there without
them; but promised to turn in his mind what Lord Cashel had said about
the turf; and, at last, went so far as to say that when a good
opportunity offered of backing out, he would part with Finn M’Coul and
Granuell—as the two nags at Igoe’s were patriotically denominated.
They continued, however, appearing in the Curragh lists in Lord
Ballindine’s name, as a part of Igoe’s string; and running for Queen’s
whips, Wellingtons and Madrids, sometimes with good and sometimes with
indifferent success. While their noble owner, when staying at Grey
Abbey, Lord Cashel’s magnificent seat near Kilcullen, spent too much of
his time (at least so thought the earl and Fanny Wyndham) in seeing
them get their gallops, and in lecturing the grooms, and being lectured
by Mr Igoe. Nothing more, however, could be done; and it was trusted
that when the day of the wedding should come, he would be found minus
the animals. What, however, was Lord Cashel’s surprise, when, after an
absence of two months from Grey Abbey, Lord Ballindine declared, in the
earl’s presence, with an air of ill-assumed carelessness, that he had
been elected one of the stewards of the Curragh, in the room of Walter
Blake, Esq., who had retired in rotation from that honourable office!
The next morning the earl’s chagrin was woefully increased by his
hearing that that very valuable and promising Derby colt, Brien Boru,
now two years old, by Sir Hercules out of Eloisa, had been added to his
lordship’s lot.
Lord Cashel felt that he could not interfere, further than by remarking
that it appeared his young friend was determined to leave the turf with
éclat; and Fanny Wyndham could only be silent and reserved for one
evening. This occurred about four months before the commencement of my
tale, and about five before the period fixed for the marriage; but, at
the time at which Lord Ballindine will be introduced in person to the
reader, he had certainly made no improvement in his manner of going on.
He had, during this period, received from Lord Cashel a letter
intimating to him that his lordship thought some further postponement
advisable; that it was as well not to fix any day; and that, though his
lordship would always be welcome at Grey Abbey, when his personal
attendance was not required at the Curragh, it was better that no
correspondence by letter should at present be carried on between him
and Miss Wyndham; and that Miss Wyndham herself perfectly agreed in the
propriety of these suggestions.
Now Grey Abbey was only about eight miles distant from the Curragh, and
Lord Ballindine had at one time been in the habit of staying at his
friend’s mansion, during the period of his attendance at the
race-course; but since Lord Cashel had shown an entire absence of
interest in the doings of Finn M’Coul, and Fanny had ceased to ask
after Granuell’s cough, he had discontinued doing so, and had spent
much of his time at his friend Walter Blake’s residence at the Curragh.
Now, Handicap Lodge offered much more dangerous quarters for him than
did Grey Abbey.
In the meantime, his friends in Connaught were delighted at the
prospect of his bringing home a bride. Fanny’s twenty thousand were
magnified to fifty, and the capabilities even of fifty were greatly
exaggerated; besides, the connection was so good a one, so exactly the
thing for the O’Kellys! Lord Cashel was one of the first resident
noblemen in Ireland, a representative peer, a wealthy man, and
possessed of great influence; not unlikely to be a cabinet minister if
the Whigs came in, and able to shower down into Connaught a degree of
patronage, such as had never yet warmed that poor unfriended region.
And Fanny Wyndham was not only his lordship’s ward, but his favourite
niece also! The match was, in every way, a good one, and greatly
pleasing to all the Kellys, whether with an O or without, for “shure
they were all the one family.”
Old Simeon Lynch and his son Barry did not participate in the general
joy. They had calculated that their neighbour was on the high road to
ruin, and that he would soon have nothing but his coronet left. They
could not, therefore, bear the idea of his making so eligible a match.
They had, moreover, had domestic dissensions to disturb the peace of
Dunmore House. Simeon had insisted on Barry’s taking a farm into his
own hands, and looking after it. Barry had declared his inability to do
so, and had nearly petrified the old man by expressing a wish to go to
Paris. Then, Barry’s debts had showered in, and Simeon had pledged
himself not to pay them. Simeon had threatened to disinherit Barry; and
Barry had called his father a d––––d obstinate old fool.
These quarrels had got to the ears of the neighbours, and it was being
calculated that, in the end, Barry would get the best of the battle;
when, one morning, the war was brought to an end by a fit of apoplexy,
and the old man was found dead in his chair. And then a terrible blow
fell upon the son; for a recent will was found in the old man’s desk,
dividing his property equally, and without any other specification,
between Barry and Anty.
This was a dreadful blow to Barry. He consulted with his friend Molloy,
the attorney of Tuam, as to the validity of the document and the power
of breaking it; but in vain. It was properly attested, though drawn up
in the old man’s own hand-writing; and his sister, whom he looked upon
but as little better than a head main-servant, had not only an equal
right to all the property, but was equally mistress of the house, the
money at the bank, the wine in the cellar, and the very horses in the
stable.
This was a hard blow; but Barry was obliged to bear it. At first, he
showed his ill-humour plainly enough in his treatment of his sister;
but he soon saw that this was folly, and that, though her quiet
disposition prevented her from resenting it, such conduct would drive
her to marry some needy man. Then he began, with an ill grace, to try
what coaxing would do. He kept, however, a sharp watch on all her
actions; and on once hearing that, in his absence, the two Kelly girls
from the hotel had been seen walking with her, he gave her a long
lecture on what was due to her own dignity, and the memory of her
departed parents.
He made many overtures to her as to the division of the property; but,
easy and humble as Anty was, she was careful enough to put her name to
nothing that could injure her rights. They had divided the money at the
banker’s, and she had once rather startled Barry by asking him for his
moiety towards paying the butcher’s bill; and his dismay was completed
shortly afterwards by being informed, by a steady old gentleman in
Dunmore, whom he did not like a bit too well, that he had been
appointed by Miss Lynch to manage her business and receive her rents.
As soon as it could be decently done, after his father’s burial, Barry
took himself off to Dublin, to consult his friends there as to what he
should do; but he soon returned, determined to put a bold face on it,
and come to some understanding with his sister.
He first proposed to her to go and live in Dublin, but she said she
preferred Dunmore. He then talked of selling the house, and to this she
agreed. He next tried to borrow money for the payment of his debts; on
which she referred him to the steady old man. Though apparently docile
and obedient, she would not put herself in his hands, nor would her
agent allow him to take any unfair advantage of her.
Whilst this was going on, our friend Martin Kelly had set his eye upon
the prize, and, by means of his sister’s intimacy with Anty, and his
own good looks, had succeeded in obtaining from her half a promise to
become his wife. Anty had but little innate respect for gentry; and,
though she feared her brother’s displeasure, she felt no degradation at
the idea of uniting herself to a man in Martin Kelly’s rank. She could
not, however, be brought to tell her brother openly, and declare her
determination; and Martin had, at length, come to the conclusion that
he must carry her off, before delay and unforeseen changes might either
alter her mind, or enable her brother to entice her out of the country.
Thus matters stood at Dunmore when Martin Kelly started for Dublin, and
at the time when he was about to wait on his patron at Morrison’s
hotel.
Both Martin and Lord Ballindine (and they were related in some distant
degree, at least so always said the Kellys, and I never knew that the
O’Kellys denied it)—both the young men were, at the time, anxious to
get married, and both with the same somewhat mercenary views; and I
have fatigued the reader with the long history of past affairs, in
order to imbue him, if possible, with some interest in the ways and
means which they both adopted to accomplish their objects.