THE KANTURK HOTEL, SOUTH MAIN STREET, CORK.
All the world no doubt knows South Main Street in the city of Cork.
In the "ould" ancient days, South and North Main Streets formed the
chief thoroughfare through the city, and hence of course they derived
their names. But now, since Patrick Street, and Grand Parade, and the
South Mall have grown up, Main Street has but little honour. It is
crowded with second-rate tobacconists and third-rate grocers; the
houses are dirty, and the street is narrow; fashionable ladies never
visit it for their shopping, nor would any respectable commercial
gent stop at an inn within its purlieus.
But here in South Main Street, at the time of which I am writing,
there was an inn, or public-house, called the Kanturk Hotel. In dear
old Ireland they have some foibles, and one of them is a passion
for high nomenclature. Those who are accustomed to the sort of
establishments which are met with in England, and much more in
Germany and Switzerland, under the name of hotels, might be surprised
to see the place in South Main Street which had been dignified with
the same appellation. It was a small, dingy house of three stories,
the front door of which was always open, and the passage strewed
with damp, dirty straw. On the left-hand side as you entered was
a sitting-room, or coffee-room as it was announced to be by an
appellation painted on the door. There was but one window to the
room, which looked into the street, and was always clouded by a
dingy-red curtain. The floor was uncarpeted, nearly black with dirt,
and usually half covered with fragments of damp straw brought into
it by the feet of customers. A strong smell of hot whisky and water
always prevailed, and the straggling mahogany table in the centre
of the room, whose rickety legs gave way and came off whenever an
attempt was made to move it, was covered by small greasy circles, the
impressions of the bottoms of tumblers which had been made by the
overflowing tipple. Over the chimney there was a round mirror, the
framework of which was bedizened with all manner of would-be gilt
ornaments, which had been cracked, and twisted, and mended till it
was impossible to know what they had been intended to represent; and
the whole affair had become a huge receptacle of dust, which fell in
flakes upon the chimney-piece when it was invaded. There was a second
table opposite the window, more rickety than that in the centre;
and against the wall opposite to the fireplace there was an old
sideboard, in the drawers of which Tom, the one-eyed waiter, kept
knives and forks, and candle-ends, and bits of bread, and dusters.
There was a sour smell, as of old rancid butter, about the place,
to which the guests sometimes objected, little inclined as they
generally were to be fastidious. But this was a tender subject, and
not often alluded to by those who wished to stand well in the good
graces of Tom. Many things much annoyed Tom; but nothing annoyed him
so fearfully as any assertion that the air of the Kanturk Hotel was
not perfectly sweet and wholesome.
Behind the coffee-room was the bar, from which Fanny O'Dwyer
dispensed dandies of punch and goes of brandy to her father's
customers from Kanturk. For at this, as at other similar
public-houses in Irish towns, the greater part of the custom on
which the publican depends came to him from the inhabitants of one
particular country district. A large four-wheeled vehicle, called
a long car, which was drawn by three horses, and travelled over a
mountain road at the rate of four Irish miles an hour, came daily
from Kanturk to Cork, and daily returned. This public conveyance
stopped in Cork at the Kanturk Hotel, and was owned by the owner of
that house, in partnership with a brother in the same trade located
in Kanturk. It was Mr. O'Dwyer's business to look after this concern,
to see to the passengers and the booking, the oats, and hay, and
stabling, while his well-known daughter, the charming Fanny O'Dwyer,
took care of the house, and dispensed brandy and whisky to the
customers from Kanturk.
To tell the truth, the bar was a much more alluring place than the
coffee-room, and Fanny O'Dwyer a more alluring personage than Tom,
the one-eyed waiter. This Elysium, however, was not open to all
comers--not even to all comers from Kanturk. Those who had the right
of entry well knew their privilege; and so also did they who had not.
This sanctum was screened off from the passage by a window, which
opened upwards conveniently, as is customary with bar-windows; but
the window was blinded inside by a red curtain, so that Fanny's
stool near the counter, her father's wooden arm-chair, and the old
horsehair sofa on which favoured guests were wont to sit, were not
visible to the public at large.
Of the up-stair portion of this establishment it is not necessary to
say much. It professed to be an hotel, and accommodation for sleeping
was to be obtained there; but the well-being of the house depended
but little on custom of this class.
Nor need I say much of the kitchen, a graphic description of which
would not be pleasing. Here lived a cook, who, together with Tom
the waiter, did all that servants had to do at the Kanturk Hotel.
From this kitchen lumps of beef, mutton chops, and potatoes did
occasionally emanate, all perfumed with plenteous onions; as also did
fried eggs, with bacon an inch thick, and other culinary messes too
horrible to be thought of. But drinking rather than eating was the
staple of this establishment. Such was the Kanturk Hotel in South
Main Street, Cork.
It was on a disagreeable, cold, sloppy, raw, winter evening--an
evening drizzling sometimes with rain, and sometimes with sleet--that
an elderly man was driven up to the door of the hotel on a one-horse
car--or jingle, as such conveniences were then called in the south of
Ireland. He seemed to know the house, for with his outside coat all
dripping as it was he went direct to the bar-window, and as Fanny
O'Dwyer opened the door he walked into that warm precinct. There he
encountered a gentleman, dressed one would say rather beyond the
merits of the establishment, who was taking his ease at full length
on Fanny's sofa, and drinking some hot compound which was to be seen
in a tumbler on the chimney-shelf just above his head. It was now six
o'clock in the evening, and the gentleman no doubt had dined.
"Well, Aby; here I am, as large as life, but as cold as death. Ugh;
what an affair that coach is! Fanny, my best of darlings, give me a
drop of something that's best for warming the cockles of an old man's
heart."
"A young wife then is the best thing in life to do that, Mr.
Mollett," said Fanny, sharply, preparing, however, at the same time
some mixture which might be taken more instantaneously.
"The governor's had enough of that receipt already," said the man
on the sofa; or rather the man now off the sofa, for he had slowly
arisen to shake hands with the new comer.
This latter person proceeded to divest himself of his dripping
greatcoat. "Here, Tom," said he, "bring your old Cyclops eye to bear
this way, will you. Go and hang that up in the kitchen; not too near
the fire now; and get me something to eat: none of your mutton chops;
but a beefsteak if there is such a thing in this benighted place.
Well, Aby, how goes on the war?"
It was clear that the elderly gentleman was quite at home in his
present quarters; for Tom, far from resenting such impertinence, as
he would immediately have done had it proceeded from an ordinary
Kanturk customer, declared "that he would do his honour's bidding av
there was such a thing as a beefsteak to be had anywhere's in the
city of Cork."
And indeed the elderly gentleman was a person of whom one might
premise, judging by his voice and appearance, that he would probably
make himself at home anywhere. He was a hale hearty man, of perhaps
sixty years of age, who had certainly been handsome, and was even
now not the reverse. Or rather, one may say, that he would have been
so were it not that there was a low, restless, cunning legible in
his mouth and eyes, which robbed his countenance of all manliness.
He was a hale man, and well preserved for his time of life; but
nevertheless, the extra rubicundity of his face, and certain
incipient pimply excrescences about his nose, gave tokens that he
lived too freely. He had lived freely; and were it not that his
constitution had been more than ordinarily strong, and that constant
exercise and exposure to air had much befriended him, those pimply
excrescences would have shown themselves in a more advanced stage.
Such was Mr. Mollett senior--Mr. Matthew Mollett, with whom it will
be soon our fate to be better acquainted.
The gentleman who had slowly risen from the sofa was his son, Mr.
Mollett junior--Mr. Abraham Mollett, with whom also we shall become
better acquainted. The father has been represented as not being
exactly prepossessing; but the son, according to my ideas, was much
less so. He also would be considered handsome by some persons--by
women chiefly of the Fanny O'Dwyer class, whose eyes are capable of
recognizing what is good in shape and form, but cannot recognize
what is good in tone and character. Mr. Abraham Mollett was perhaps
some thirty years of age, or rather more. He was a very smart man,
with a profusion of dark, much-oiled hair, with dark, copious
mustachoes--and mustachoes being then not common as they are now,
added to his otherwise rakish, vulgar appearance--with various rings
on his not well-washed hands, with a frilled front to his not lately
washed shirt, with a velvet collar to his coat, and patent-leather
boots upon his feet.
Free living had told more upon him, young as he was, than upon his
father. His face was not yet pimply, but it was red and bloated;
his eyes were bloodshot and protruding; his hand on a morning was
unsteady; and his passion for brandy was stronger than that for
beefsteaks; whereas his father's appetite for solid food had never
flagged. Those who were intimate with the family, and were observant
of men, were wont to remark that the son would never fill the
father's shoes. These family friends, I may perhaps add, were
generally markers at billiard-tables, head grooms at race-courses, or
other men of that sharp, discerning class. Seeing that I introduce
these gentlemen to my readers at the Kanturk Hotel, in South Main
Street, Cork, it may be perhaps as well to add that they were both
Englishmen; so that mistakes on that matter may be avoided.
The father, as soon as he had rid himself of his upper coat, his
dripping hat, and his goloshes, stood up with his back to the
bar-room fire, with his hands in his trousers-pockets, and the tails
of his coat stuck inside his arms.
"I tell you, Aby, it was cold enough outside that infernal coach. I'm
blessed if I've a morsel of feeling in my toes yet. Why the d----
don't they continue the railway on to Cork? It's as much as a man's
life is worth to travel in that sort of way at this time of the
year."
"You'll have more of it then if you intend going out of town
to-morrow," said the son.
"Well; I don't know that I shall. I shall take a day to consider of
it I think."
"Consideration be bothered," said Mollett junior; "strike when the
iron's hot; that's my motto."
The father here turned half round to his son and winked at him,
nodding his head slightly towards the girl, thereby giving token
that, according to his ideas, the conversation could not be
discreetly carried on before a third person.
"All right," said the son, lifting his joram of brandy and water to
his mouth; an action in which he was immediately imitated by his
father, who had now received the means of doing so from the hands of
the fair Fanny.
"And how about a bed, my dear?" said Mollett senior; "that's a matter
of importance too; or will be when we are getting on to the little
hours."
"Oh, we won't turn you out, Mr. Mollett," said Fanny; "we'll find a
bed for you, never fear."
"That's all right then, my little Venus. And now if I had some dinner
I'd sit down and make myself comfortable for the evening."
As he said this, Fanny slipped out of the room, and ran down into the
kitchen to see what Tom and the cook were doing. The Molletts, father
and son, were rather more than ordinary good customers at the Kanturk
Hotel, and it was politic therefore to treat them well. Mr. Mollett
junior, moreover, was almost more than a customer; and for the sake
of the son Fanny was anxious that the father should be well treated.
"Well, governor, and what have you done?" said the younger man in a
low voice, jumping up from his seat as soon as the girl had left them
alone.
"Well, I've got the usual remittance from the man in Bucklersbury.
That was all as right as a trivet."
"And no more than that? Then I tell you what it is; we must be down
on him at once."
"But you forget that I got as much more last month, out of the usual
course. Come, Aby, don't you be unreasonable."
"Bother--I tell you, governor, if he don't--" And then Miss O'Dwyer
returned to her sanctum, and the rest of the conversation was
necessarily postponed.
"He's managed to get you a lovely steak, Mr. Mollett," said Fanny,
pronouncing the word as though it were written "steek." "And we've
beautiful pickled walnuts; haven't we, Mr. Aby? and there'll be
kidneys biled" (meaning potatoes) "by the time the 'steek's' ready.
You like it with the gravy in, don't you, Mr. Mollett?" And as she
spoke she drew a quartern of whisky for two of Beamish and Crawford's
draymen, who stood outside in the passage and drank it at the bar.
The lovely "steek" with the gravy in it--that is to say, nearly
raw--was now ready, and father and son adjourned to the next room.
"Well, Tom, my lad of wax; and how's the world using you?" said Mr.
Mollett senior.
"There ain't much difference then," said Tom; "I ain't no younger,
nor yet no richer than when yer honour left us--and what is't to be,
sir?--a pint of stout, sir?"
As soon as Mr. Mollett senior had finished his dinner, and Tom had
brought the father and son materials for making whisky-punch, they
both got their knees together over the fire, and commenced the
confidential conversation which Miss O'Dwyer had interrupted on her
return to the bar-room. They spoke now almost in a whisper, with
their heads together over the fender, knowing from experience that
what Tom wanted in eyes he made up in ears.
"And what did Prendergast say when he paid you the rhino?" asked the
son.
"Not a word," said the other. "After all, I don't think he knows
any more than a ghost what he pays it for: I think he gets fresh
instructions every time. But, any ways, there it was, all right."
"Hall right, indeed! I do believe you'd be satisfied to go on getting
a few dribblets now and then like that. And then if anything 'appened
to you, why I might go fish."
"How, Aby, look here--"
"It's hall very well, governor; but I'll tell you what. Since you
started off I've been thinking a good deal about it, and I've made up
my mind that this shilly-shallying won't do any good: we must strike
a blow that'll do something for us."
"Well, I don't think we've done so bad already, taking it
all-in-all."
"Ah, that's because you haven't the pluck to strike a good blow.
Now I'll just let you know what I propose--and I tell you fairly,
governor, if you'll not hear reason, I'll take the game into my own
hands."
The father looked up from his drink and scowled at his son, but said
nothing in answer to this threat.
"By G---- I will!" continued Aby. "It's no use 'umbugging, and I mean
to make myself understood. While you've been gone I've been down to
that place."
"You 'aven't seen the old man?"
"No; I 'aven't taken that step yet; but I think it's very likely I
may before long if you won't hear reason."
"I was a d---- fool, Aby, ever to let you into the affair at all.
It's been going on quiet enough for the last ten years, till I let
you into the secret."
"Well, never mind about that. That mischief's done. But I think
you'll find I'll pull you through a deal better than hever you'd have
pulled through yourself. You're already making twice more out of it
than you did before I knew it. As I was saying, I went down there;
and in my quiet way I did just venture on a few hinquiries."
"I'll be bound you did. You'll blow it all in about another month,
and then it'll be up with the lot of us."
"It's a beautiful place: a lovely spot; and hall in prime horder.
They say it's fifteen thousand a year, and that there's not a
shilling howing on the whole property. Even in these times the
tenants are paying the rent, when no one else, far and near,
is getting a penny out of them. I went by another place on the
road--Castle Desmond they call it, and I wish you'd seen the
difference. The old boy must be rolling in money."
"I don't believe it. There's one as I can trust has told me he's hard
up enough sometimes. Why, we've had twelve hundred in the last eight
months."
"Twelve hundred! and what's that? But, dickens, governor, where has
the twelve hundred gone? I've only seen three of it, and part of
that--. Well; what do you want there, you long-eared shark, you?"
These last words were addressed to Tom, who had crept into the room,
certainly without much preparatory noise.
"I was only wanting the thingumbob, yer honour," said Tom, pretending
to search diligently in the drawer for some required article.
"Then take your thingumbob quickly out of that, and be d---- to you.
And look here; if you don't knock at the door when next you come in,
by heavens I'll throw this tumbler at your yead."
"Sure and I will, yer honour," said Tom, withdrawing.
"And where on hearth has the twelve hundred pounds gone?" asked the
son, looking severely at the father.
Old Mr. Mollett made no immediate answer in words, but putting his
left hand to his right elbow, began to shake it.
"I do wonder that you keep hon at that work," said Mollett junior,
reproachfully. "You never by any chance have a stroke of luck."
"Well, I have been unfortunate lately; but who knows what's coming?
And I was deucedly sold by those fellows at the October meeting. If
any chap ever was safe, I ought to have been safe then; but hang me
if I didn't drop four hundred of Sir Thomas's shiners coolly on the
spot. That was the only big haul I've had out of him all at once; and
the most of it went like water through a sieve within forty-eight
hours after I touched it." And then, having finished this pathetical
little story of his misfortune, Mr. Mollett senior finished his glass
of toddy.
"It's the way of the world, governor; and it's no use sighing after
spilt milk. But I'll tell you what I propose; and if you don't like
the task yourself, I have no hobjection in life to take it into my
own hands. You see the game's so much our own that there's nothing on
hearth for us to fear."
"I don't know that. If we were all blown, where should we be--"
"Why, she's your own--"
"H-h-sh, Aby. There's that confounded long-eared fellow at the
keyhole, as sure as my name's Matthew; and if he hears you, the
game's all up with a vengeance."
"Lord bless you, what could he hear? Besides, talking as we are now,
he wouldn't catch a word even if he were in the room itself. And now
I'll tell you what it is; do you go down yourself, and make your way
into the hold gentleman's room. Just send your own name in boldly.
Nobody will know what that means, except himself."
"I did that once before; and I never shall forget it."
"Yes, you did it once before, and you have had a steady income
to live on ever since; not such an income as you might have had.
Not such an income as will do for you and me, now that we both
know so well what a fine property we have under our thumbs. But,
nevertheless, that little visit has been worth something to you."
"Upon my word, Aby, I never suffered so much as I did that day. I
didn't know till then that I had a soft heart."
"Soft heart! Oh, bother. Such stuff as that always makes me sick. If
I 'ate anything, it's maudlin. Your former visit down there did very
well, and now you must make another, or else, by the holy poker! I'll
make it for you."
"And what would you have me say to him if I did manage to see him?"
"Perhaps I'd better go--"
"That's out of the question. He wouldn't see you, or understand who
you were. And then you'd make a row, and it would all come out, and
the fat would be in the fire."
"Well, I guess I should not take it quite quiet if they didn't treat
me as a gentleman should be treated. I ain't always over-quiet if I'm
put upon."
"If you go near that house at all I'll have done with it. I'll give
up the game."
"Well, do you go, at any rate first. Perhaps it may be well that I
should follow after with a reminder. Do you go down, and just tell
him this, quite coolly, remember--"
"Oh, I shall be cool enough."
"That, considering hall things, you think he and you ought to--"
"Well?"
"Just divide it between you; share and share alike. Say it's fourteen
thousand--and it's more than that--that would be seven for him and
seven for you. Tell him you'll agree to that, but you won't take one
farthing less."
"Aby!" said the father, almost overcome by the grandeur of his son's
ideas.
"Well; and what of Haby? What's the matter now?"
"Expect him to shell out seven thousand pounds a year!"
"And why not? He'll do a deal more than that, I expect, if he were
quite sure that it would make all things serene. But it won't; and
therefore you must make him another hoffer."
"Another offer!"
"Yes. He'll know well enough that you'll be thinking of his death.
And for all they do say he might pop off any day."
"He's a younger man than me, Aby, by full ten years."
"What of that? You may pop off any day too, mayn't you? I believe you
old fellows don't think of dying nigh as hoften as we young ones."
"You young ones are always looking for us old ones to go. We all know
that well enough."
"That's when you've got anything to leave behind you, which hain't
the case with you, governor, just at present. But what I was saying
is this. He'll know well enough that you can split upon his son
hafter he's gone, every bit as well as you can split on him now."
"Oh, I always looked to make the young gentleman pay up handsome, if
so be the old gentleman went off the hooks. And if so be he and I
should go off together like, why you'd carry on, of course. You'll
have the proofs, you know."
"Oh, I should, should I? Well, we'll look to them by-and-by. But
I'll tell you what, governor, the best way is to make all that safe.
We'll make him another hoffer--for a regular substantial family
harrangement--"
"A family arrangement, eh?"
"Yes; that's the way they always manage things when great family
hinterests is at stake. Let him give us a cool seven thousand a year
between us while he's alive; let him put you down for twenty thousand
when he's dead--that'd come out of the young gentleman's share of the
property, of course--and then let him give me his daughter Hemmeline,
with another twenty thousand tacked on to her skirt-tail. I should be
mum then for hever for the honour of the family."
The father for a moment or two was struck dumb by the magnitude
of his son's proposition. "That's what I call playing the game
firm," continued the son. "Do you lay down your terms before him,
substantial, and then stick to 'em. 'Them's my terms, Sir Thomas,'
you'll say. 'If you don't like 'em, as I can't halter, why in course
I'll go elsewhere.' Do you be firm to that, and you'll see how the
game'll go."
"And you think he'll give you his daughter in marriage?"
"Why not? I'm honest born, hain't I? And she's a bastard."
"But, Aby, you don't know what sort of people these are. You don't
know what her breeding has been."
"D---- her breeding. I know this: she'd get a deuced pretty fellow
for her husband, and one that girls as good as her has hankered
hafter long enough. It won't do, governor, to let people as is in
their position pick and choose like. We've the hupper hand, and we
must do the picking and choosing."
"She'd never have you, Aby; not if her father went down on his knees
to her to ask her."
"Oh, wouldn't she? By heaven, then, she shall, and that without any
kneeling at all. She shall have me, and be deuced glad to take me.
What! she'd refuse a fellow like me when she knows that she and all
belonging to her'd be turned into the streets if she don't have me!
I'm clear of another way of thinking, then. My opinion is she'd come
to me jumping. I'll tell you what, governor, you don't know the sex."
Mr. Mollett senior upon this merely shook his head. Perhaps the fact
was that he knew the sex somewhat better than his son. It had been
his fate during a portion of his life to live among people who were,
or ought to have been, gentlemen. He might have been such himself had
he not gone wrong in life from the very starting-post. But his son
had had no such opportunities. He did know and could know nothing
about ladies and gentlemen.
"You're mistaken, Aby," said the old man. "They'd never suffer you to
come among them on such a footing as that. They'd sooner go forth to
the world as beggars."
"Then, by G----! they shall go forth as beggars. I've said it now,
father, and I'll stick to it. You know the stuff I'm made of." As he
finished speaking, he swallowed down the last half of a third glass
of hot spirits and water, and then glared on his father with angry,
blood-shot eyes, and a red, almost lurid face. The unfortunate father
was beginning to know the son, and to feel that his son would become
his master.
Shortly after this they were interrupted; and what further
conversation they had on the matter that night took place in their
joint bedroom; to which uninviting retreat it is not now necessary
that we should follow them.