"McCarthy is no more!" said George, as I rushed out on learning his
arrival from the scene of conflict. "Raymond reserved his fire; then
deliberately taking aim, sent his ball through the heart of our
gallant friend, who stood firm and undaunted to receive his fire."
"Good God!" I exclaimed, "was there no man present whose humanity
prompted him to interpose for the prevention of so murderous a deed?"
"The attempt was made," said George, "but unavailingly. Raymond was
the challenged party, and with a savage sternness of purpose insisted
on his right, according to the rules which were agreed upon to govern
the conflict."
"He is a hardened villain," cried I, "stained with the blood of four
victims; and palsied be the hand that has robbed society of so pure
and generous a spirit as McCarthy's."
Struck with horror at the occurrence, and overwhelmed with sorrow at
the loss of so worthy a friend, needing consolation myself rather than
capable of affording any, I hurried nevertheless to the house of the
deceased, to share, if not to alleviate the sufferings of his bereaved
mother and sister. Never, never shall I forget the scene which there
awaited me. The lifeless body of McCarthy, weltering in his own blood,
lay extended on a large folding table. The ball had entered the right
side, and with fatal energy had passed through the body, leaving a
corresponding wound on the left. The mother and sister, with
disordered hair and the wild expression of maniacs, stood at either
side of the corpse, applying their mouths to the wounds from which the
blood was still oozing; nor could anything short of absolute violence
withdraw them from the body. They wept not--they spoke not; but in all
the wild impassioned energy of despair, kept their mouths still
applied to the gaping wounds of the son and brother.
The deceased was a young gentleman, who inherited a handsome estate in
the south of Ireland. He had but the year before become of age, and
returned from Trinity College, where his vigorous understanding and
zeal in the pursuit of literature had won for him the first honors of
that venerable institution. Frank, generous and beneficent, he seemed
intent on applying the energies of his active mind and the resources
of an ample fortune, to the moral and physical improvement of his
tenantry and dependants. A year of unexampled scarcity, gave him an
early opportunity of developing those generous purposes of his pure
and elevated mind. To the lower classes of his tenantry he remitted a
part of their rents, and to the surrounding poor he distributed
provisions, exacting from them in return, only increased attention to
cleanliness and neatness in their persons and dwellings. He had
besides a large tract of unreclaimed peat land, on which, at proper
intervals, he erected comfortable stone dwellings, and let portions of
this land to the industrious poor, requiring no rent from them except
the application to the soil which they were to cultivate for their own
benefit, of some bushels of lime, easily procured from the contiguous
quarries. Thus, in a very short period, he effected a perceptible
change in the condition of his tenantry, while he was in fact
developing new resources for the indulgence of further beneficence.
His tenantry already looked to him as a friend and protector; they
submitted their difficulties to his arbitration, and applied to him
for redress for their grievances, when oppressed or maltreated by any
of the petty gentry of the vicinage. In addition to this generous
devotion to their interests, McCarthy possessed advantages, which are
no where more fully appreciated than among the imaginative and half
chivalrous Irish peasantry. With a Moorish head, and face of the
finest cast, often met with among the Milesian gentry of Ireland, he
had a form developed in muscular and beautiful proportions, much above
the common stature, resembling his ancestors in that particular, who
from their large and muscular frames, obtained familiarly the
appellation of _McCarthy Mores_. The cordial frankness of his manners
too, assured the peasants who approached him, that his was no affected
interest in their welfare and happiness. Thus endowed with every
quality of mind, heart and person that could win esteem and
confidence, was it to be wondered at that he should have become,
almost at once, the idol of a warm-hearted and grateful people? Alas!
they had too many opportunities of contrasting his kindness and
generosity, with the indifference, if not harshness of neighboring
landlords; or with the odious oppressions of mercenary agents to whom
they confided their estates. To this latter class Raymond belonged; he
was one of that wretched faction that so long kept Ireland in
degradation. A Palatine by extraction--a member of the Orange
Club--distinguished for his zeal in the unholy objects of that
mischievous and once powerful association--without fortune and without
education, save a limited knowledge of accounts, he possessed cunning
and contrivance enough to win his way to the agency of a large estate,
belonging to an absentee nobleman, who appeared once in three years
among his tenantry, only to exasperate their feelings by walking at
the head of an Orange procession. Raymond had a pecuniary claim
against one of the humblest of McCarthy's tenantry, and in the hour of
his greatest need, was enforcing it with the spirit of a Shylock.
McCarthy remonstrated--offered to insure the payment, if he would
extend the time until the ripening crop should enable the poor man to
meet the demand. Raymond insultingly refused--charged McCarthy with
rendering the tenantry of the surrounding country insubordinate to
their landlords, and creating discontent among his neighbor's
tenantry, by ill-timed indulgence to his own; and intimated in
McCarthy a purpose inconsistent with loyalty to his sovereign.
Unhappily, instead of inflicting on the miscreant the punishment which
his strong arm could so easily have enforced, yielding to a barbarous
usage which his better judgment must have condemned, McCarthy sent him
a hostile message on the following morning. Proud of meeting such an
antagonist--conscious of his unerring dexterity in the use of a weapon
which on three former occasions had been fatally true in his
hands--and anxious to remove a neighbor whose virtues and whose energy
were a painful rebuke, and promised to be a troublesome check on his
own views--Raymond gladly accepted the challenge, and dictated through
his friend, as vindictive as himself, the terms of the combat. The
result is known; and long shall the impressions made by that result,
leave their traces in the breasts of the inhabitants of Kenmare.
Amidst the general sorrow for what was regarded as a public
bereavement, there was one heart on which it fell with a blight that
withered every joy, and dried up at its very source the fountain of
every hope. The mother and the daughter were privileged in their
wailings; but there was one, who had received from him only the first
evidences of newly kindled love, but who, silent and unobserved, had
reposed on that evidence, slight though it was, all that she hoped for
of earthly felicity. It was Ellen--to whom an expression of tenderness
which her love made her interpret aright, and a hurried earnestness of
manner in his last adieu, had whispered that the heart in which she
had unconsciously garnered up her happiness, reciprocated a feeling
which she strove to conceal even from herself. Daily intercourse with
both, too plainly told me that the world contained but one being
capable of interesting Ellen. I saw the wasting of a flame, which I
feared would consume her; and believing her every way worthy of my
noble-hearted friend, I sought to fix his attention on the charms of
her person, and the elegance and purity of her mind, without wounding
his delicacy by an intimation that I believed he had any hold on her
affections. At first his mind was so occupied with schemes for
ameliorating the condition of his tenantry, that they seemed to render
him indifferent to all besides. The natural enjoyments of his age and
station seemed to be shut out by these thoughts; and it was only when
the approach of the fatal rencontre with Raymond caused him to look
more closely into the recesses of his own breast, that McCarthy felt
that Ellen was not to him an object of indifference. He sought her
presence the evening before his fall. There was in his manner that
which told the watchful eye of a lover that her love was returned. Yet
he breathed no word of love--he sought no pledge of affection, lest
the event of the morrow should pierce too deeply a heart which he now
felt he would not wound for the world. Leaving to other friends the
task of consoling, if possible, the distracted relatives of the
deceased, I sought the home of Ellen. I found her alone; she started
wildly on seeing me.
"Is it true?" she exclaimed; "is he dead? Say, is McCarthy dead?"
"It is too true, Ellen," said I; "our friend--our generous,
noble-hearted friend, has fallen by the hands of a privileged
assassin."
"_Friend!_" said Ellen impetuously, "he was to me--" and checking
herself in the expression which to me was not necessary to convey what
she meant, she sunk back, relaxed and colorless, into her chair; her
bosom heaved as if contending with a tide of emotions--she sobbed
hysterically, and at last found temporary relief in a flood of tears.
Poor Ellen, alas! the relief was but temporary. The wild tide of
passionate sorrow, it is true, subsided soon; but it had left deep
furrows in the broken heart of Ellen, which time could not efface. Her
spirits sunk daily; her beautifully rounded figure became lank and
attenuated; her eye lost its lustre, and she shrunk instinctively from
the gaze of all, as if anxious to hide the secret of that grief which
was consuming her. Her physicians recommended change of air and scene;
they were tried--but no scene had a charm, no air had a balm for poor
Ellen.
Twelve months rolled by, and a gloomy pageant was seen passing through
the streets of Kenmare; that pageant was conducting to the family
vault, the lifeless remains of Ellen Mahony.
The fatal ball which drank the life's blood of the generous McCarthy,
broke also the heart of Ellen. Nor were they the only victims
immolated on the altar of a false honor. The mother of McCarthy sunk
prematurely into the grave; and his lovely sister continued to
manifest for many years, by occasional fits of melancholy madness, the
severe shock which her heart and understanding had received from the
premature fall of an idolized brother.
The pursuit of professional knowledge called me far away from the
scene of these occurrences. The fate of McCarthy and Ellen presented
itself less frequently to my mind, occluded by new scenes and
avocations. In 1818, six years after the fatal catastrophe, I returned
to visit, for the last time, my relatives in Kenmare. Mary, the lovely
sister of my murdered friend, bereft of every nearer relative, was
residing with her uncle, a distinguished officer of the Irish Brigade,
who with a constitution broken down by the fatigues of an eventful
life, had retired to a small estate near the lakes of Killarney. I
owed it to the memory of my deceased friend, to visit the last
surviving object of his affection. The day was full of freshness and
beauty, and the country through which I must travel to reach the seat
of Colonel McCarthy, is not surpassed by any in the world, in the wild
grandeur of its scenery. The road from Kenmare winds along a chain of
lakes, now narrowing into deep channels, hurrying precipitously their
angry and foaming waters into reservoirs below--now expanding into
broad and silvery inland seas, studded with verdant islands, blooming
with Arbutus and Lauristina. From the unruffled surface of these
lakes, you behold reflected, as from an expanded mirror, the images of
the over-hanging mountains, wooded to their tops, and varying in the
hues of the dense foliage that covers them with every varying stratum
of soil, from their bases to their summits. The high and threatening
Turk Mountain yields its reluctant base to the winding road. The
beautiful Peninsula of Mucrus is seen in full view. Its venerable
Abbey, still exhibiting traces of its former grandeur, containing
within its sombre walls the slumbering remains of many a gallant
knight and gentle maiden, of the humble and the great, in
indiscriminate oblivion. The proud mansion of the Herberts, still in
fine keeping--the long vistas opening in every direction on some
cultivated villa or rich demesne; the town of Killarney, with its
spires and undulating lines of white buildings; the mansions of the
Kenmares, the Cronins, and O'Connells,--all seen in distant
perspective, afford a coup d'oeil unsurpassed in beauty and natural
munificence by any in the world. As I revisited these scenes which my
boyhood loved to trace, there stole upon my heart a melancholy joy; it
was indeed "pleasant but mournful to the soul." The friends with whom
I had enjoyed these scenes were gone, or hurried far apart by the
varying engagements of busy life. To one of those friends this journey
was devoted, and his virtues and his fate rose before me in vivid
colors. The tear rose unbidden to my eye, and dimmed for awhile the
bright scene before me. Thus attuned to melancholy, I approached about
ten o'clock the residence of Colonel McCarthy. The modest but tasteful
dwelling was situated on a small eminence in the centre of a basin,
formed by a hill in the rear, and two projecting wings, open and
expanding to the south and southeast, having in full view before it
the ancient castles of Dunloe and Desmond--the beautiful lower lake
and its crowning ornament, the island of Innisfallen--Ross, the
majestic castle of the O'Donoghues--and to the right the bold Mountain
of Tornies, with its foaming cataract, appearing to the distant eye
like the giant guardian of the place, with his silvery beard flowing
on his venerable breast. The grounds were tastefully laid out, and the
regularity and order that was observable in all the decorations of the
place, gave evidence of a superintending mind trained to discipline;
while the surrounding scenery bespoke it an appropriate refuge for the
warrior worn with toil and years.
As I approached, I beheld a female form sitting on a little eminence
to the right of the house, which was decorated with a cluster of white
pines. I could not mistake the light and graceful form of the
beautiful Mary. It was she, much as I had beheld her six years before.
Her large blue eye had the same wildness of expression which was
observable in it after the death of her brother; her figure was if
anything more beautiful, set off by a dress which she had selected in
the wild imaginings of her sorrow, to fit her in a special manner for
communion with the spirits of her mother and brother; her hair was
loose, but carefully combed, flowing gracefully on her shoulders; her
bust was incased in a plain white spencer, most studiously fitted to
her person; and she wore hanging in loose folds around her, a pure and
virgin white drapery, that was rivalled by the pellucid whiteness of
her uncovered neck, hand and arm. This dress, as I afterwards learned,
she always wore when the mind gave way before periodical melancholy;
and its approach was too truly announced by the cautious vigilance
with which she was observed to hide from her friends the preparations
for her strange attire. As I approached, I saw too plainly that Mary
had no thought for any object before her.
"Mary," said I, "do you not know me? do you not know E----, the friend
of your brother?"
"Oh yes," said she, keeping her eye steadily fixed as on some object
towards the lake. "Yes, yes," said she in a hurried manner. Then
placing her soft hand gently in my arm, she said, "Go, good spirit,
go; I want my mother and Sandy. See, they are coming; Mary will yet
have a mother and brother."
I spoke, I reasoned, I entreated her to come with me into the presence
of her uncle.
She replied with a hysterical laugh, and said, "He too is gone with
them."
I turned towards the house, and all there seemed silent and full of
sorrow. The Colonel's servant, with eyes swollen from weeping, replied
to my inquiries about his master, that he had that morning expired,
having for some days suffered intensely from the effects of his old
wounds.
"And who," said I, "remains to give consolation to the poor and
forlorn Mary?"
"Ah," said John, "Miss Mary is always light when any sorrow comes on
the family. The Dunloe family are coming here to take Miss Mary home
with them."
"God grant," said I, "she may be soothed by their kindness. Has she no
attendant, John?"
"Yes sir, but my poor master said it was best not to trouble her when
she is in her strange way."
I wound my way back slowly and mournfully from this house of sorrow. I
have since passed from scene to scene; I have witnessed the agonies of
many a breaking heart, and have been myself the subject of much sorrow
and anguish; but never did I witness blight and desolation equal to
that brought on the house of McCarthy by the murderous hand of
Raymond.