"The only living thing he could not hate
Was reft at once--and he deserved his fate,
But did not feel it less; the good explore
For peace, these realms where guilt can never soar;
The proud--the wayward--who have fixed below
Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe,
Lose in that one their all--perchance a mite--
But who in patience parts with all delight?"
Pleasant days they were when, through the soft spring weather, I
wandered round the coasts of Kerry, Clare, and Galway, hooking salmon in
broad pools, where the vexed water rests a while from its labors under
wooded cliffs, and at the tail of roaring rapids, specked with white
foam-clots, or sea-trout in the estuaries where the great rivers hurry
down to their stormy meeting with the Atlantic rollers.
Every where I met the frank, cheery welcome that you must cross the
Channel to find in its perfection.
It is sad to see how widely over that fair land the abomination of
desolation has cast its shadow. Many halls are tenantless besides those
of Tara. The ancient owners of the soil--where are they? Not a country
in Europe but is conscious of these restless, careless, homeless
Zingari. In distant provincial towns of France you hear their enormous
blunders in grammar and musical Milesian brogue breaking the uniformity
of dull legitimist _soirées_. Hombourg and Baden are irradiated with the
glory of their whiskers. You find their blue eyes and open, handsome
features diversifying the sameness of wooden-faced Austrian squadrons.
Nay, has it not been whispered that the proudest name in Ireland
attained a bad eminence in the Grecian Archipelago as the captain of the
wickedest of those long low craft that, in the purple dawn or ivory
moonlight, steal silently out from behind the headlands of the Cyclades?
But let us do justice to those who remain behind.
The sceptre of Connemara has passed away from the ancient dynasty. If
the penultimate monarch could rise from his peaceful grave, his place
would know him no more. If he traveled through all his thirty miles of
seaboard, the Scotch laborers would doff their hats more respectfully to
the steward of the "Law Life" than to the humane old homicide. The royal
writ, which he defied from his place at St. Stephen's, might be served
now, I imagine, without danger of the bailiff's breaking his fast on the
same. Claret flows soberly from long-necked bottles whose corks bear the
brand of the wine-merchant, high priced and legal, instead of from the
cask of which the snug sandy cove and the roguish-looking hooker could
have told tales. But, in spite of visionary rents, and poor-rates
sternly real, the Irish squire still clings to the exercise of that
hospitality which has been an heirloom with the tribes since the days of
Strongbow.
One of my longest halting-places was at Ralph Mohun's, by whom, though
personally unknown to him, I was made very welcome as a friend of Guy's.
My host deserves a more especial mention, for his history was a sad,
though not an uncommon one.
He began life in a Cavalry regiment, wherein he conducted himself with
fair average propriety till he met Lady Caroline Desborough. He fell in
love with her--most people did--but, unluckily, when she married Mr.
Mannering, to whom she had been predestined since her _début_, he could
not bring himself to wear the willow decently and in order, like her
other disappointed admirers.
It was the old unhappy story: her husband neglected Lady Caroline
consistently--ill-treated her sometimes. Mohun pursued his purpose with
the relentless obstinacy of his character. Eighteen months after her
marriage they fled together.
He was not rich, so that the trial which ensued, with its heavy damages,
completely crippled him. The partner of his crime was absolutely
penniless. They went to Vienna, and Ralph entered the Austrian
Cuirassiers, where he had some interest to push him. He had lingered
some time within reach of England, to give Mannering an opportunity of
demanding satisfaction. But the injured husband knew his man too well to
trust himself within fifteen paces of Mohun's pistol. He chose a surer,
safer revenge in taking no steps to procure a divorce, and so debarring
Ralph from his only means of atonement--marriage with his victim.
He varied the dull routine of seducers, it is true, for he never wearied
of, or behaved unkindly to, the woman he had ruined. Time brought many
troubles on them, but never satiety or coldness. To the very last he
worshiped her, and, to the utmost of his power, guarded her tenderly.
Rough, and hard, and morose as he was to others, she never heard his
lips utter one harsh word.
But she was of a proud, sensitive spirit, and had miscalculated her
strength when she thought she could bear dishonor. After that duel with
which Austria rang, in which the best _schlager_ in his brigade fell,
horribly mangled, the day after he had whispered a jest about Caroline
Mannering, men were very cautious how they even looked askance at her;
but the women--who could bridle their tongues or blunt their scornful
glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern
dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carcass of a fair
fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph,
vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned--the choosers of the slain.
I pity from my heart the frailest, the most utterly fallen of her sex,
when once the social Nemesis hands her over to the chorus of the
Eumenides.
We deride the _subsignanæ_ who line the wall; we make a mock at their
old-fashioned whist; we risk jokes whereat our partners smile
approvingly on their false fronts and wonderful head-gears; but may the
wittiest of us never know by experience how much worse is the bite than
the bark of the Veteran Battalion!
Caroline Mannering had all this to contend with, for Vienna was a
favorite resort in those days for the English, and she was constantly
encountering some of her old set. She bore up bravely for a while, but
it killed her. She never wearied her lover with her self-reproach, but
crushed back her sorrows into her heart, and met him always with a
gentle smile. That same smile contrasted so sadly, at last, with the
wan, worn features, that it often made him bend his bushy brows to
conceal the rising tears.
If her destiny had been different--if she had died ripe in years, after
a life spent in calm matronly happiness, with all that she loved best
round her, would she have been nursed so tenderly or mourned so bitterly
by the nearest and dearest of them all as she was by her tempter to sin?
I think not. I believe that in all the world there never was a greater
sorrow than that which Mohun endured as he saw his treasure slowly
escaping him; never a desolation more complete and crushing than that
which fell upon him as he stood by her corpse, with dry eyes, folded
arms, and a heavy, frowning brow. It was not only that he felt her place
could never be filled again--many feel that, and find it turn out
so--but a part of his being was gone: all that was soft, and kind, and
tender in his nature died with Caroline Mannering. He never could get
rid of a certain chivalry which was inherent in him, so sometimes he
would do a generous thing; but he did it so harshly as to deprive the
act of the semblance of good-nature. I think he very seldom again felt
sympathy or compassion for any living creature. Perhaps he thought the
world had behaved hardly to his dead love, and so never forgave it. She
passed away very stilly and painlessly. She was leaning on his breast
when he saw death come into her eyes: he shivered then all over, as if a
cold wind had struck him suddenly, but spoke no word. She understood
him, though. Her last motion was to draw his cheek down to hers with her
thin, shadowy arm, and her last breath went up to the God who would
judge them both in an unselfish prayer.
"She was rightly served," says Cornelia; "such women ought to be
miserable."
O rigid mother of the Gracchi! how we all respect you, _trônante_ in the
comfortable cathedra of virtue inexpugnable, perhaps unassailed. Your
dictum must stand for the present. The court is with you. But I believe
other balances will weigh the strength of temptation, the weakness of
human endurance, the sincerity of repentance, and the extent of suffered
retribution, when the Father of all that have lived and erred since the
world began shall make up His jewels. In that day, I think, the light of
many orthodox virgins and dignified matrons will pale before the softer
lustre of Magdalene the Saint.
Mohun remained in the Austrian service some time after Caroline
Mannering's death, and, by dint of good service and interest, rose
rapidly; but, about eight years before I saw him, a distant relation
left him the estate in the west of Ireland, where he had resided ever
since, making occasional visits to the Continent, and beating up his old
quarters, but rarely coming to England.
He did not mix much with the county society, such as it was; and his
visitors were chiefly friends from England who had not forgotten him
yet, or the military quartered in his neighborhood.
It was a dreary, desolate old house where he lived--massive, square, and
gray. There were wooded banks and hollows just round it; but farther
afield the chill, bare moorland stretched away toward the sea, broken
here and there by sullen sedgy tarns.
Here he spent his monotonous existence, riding hard and drinking
obstinately, but never, even in the latter case, rising into
conviviality. A long, bushy beard, and portentous mustache, grizzled,
though he was scarcely past middle age, which could not conceal a deep
sabre-scar, gave him a grim, sinister expression; and his voice had that
brief imperious accent which is peculiar to men for many years used to
give the word of command.
That worn, haggard face told a real tale. The furrows there had been
plowed by an enduring remorse, very different from that comfortable,
half-complacent regret which some feel at the retrospect of their
youthful _frèdaines_.
They shake their solemn old heads as they hold themselves up to us as a
warning; they sermonize with edifying gravity on the impropriety of such
misdemeanors; but we can trace through all this an under-current of
satisfaction tenderly fatuitous, as they go back to the days of their
gipsyhood, when Plancus was consul.
I have been amused with watching these eminent but somewhat sensual
Christians on such occasions, and seeing the dull eyes begin to glisten,
and the lips wrinkle themselves into a fat, unpleasant smile. _They_
have prospered since, and certainly it would be most absurd to torment
themselves now about the souls and bodies which they once sacrificed to
a whim. Over those ruins and relics the River of Oblivion has rolled
long ago--let them sleep on there and take their rest.
Have we not the bright example of the prototype of this class--the
pious Æneas? How creditable was his behavior when he looked back over
the black water on the trail of flame stretching from the funeral pyre
where Dido lay burning!
"He knew," says his admiring biographer, "what the madness of women
could do;" but the breeze was getting up astern, and favoring gods
beckoned him on to Italy and fortune; so he sighed twice or
thrice--perhaps he wept, for the amiable hero's tears were always ready
on the shortest notice--and then, like the captain of the _Hesperus_,
"steered for the open sea."
Did he feel a pang of remorse or shame at that meeting in the twilight
of Hades, when he called vainly on Elissa, and the dead queen, from
where she stood by the side of Sychæus, who had forgiven her all, turned
on him the disgust and horror of her imperial eyes? Who can tell? The
greatest and best of men have their moments of weakness. If so, be sure
he was soon comforted as he reviewed the shadowy procession of his
posterity of kings. The episode of Byrsa would scarcely trouble his
conjugal happiness, or make him more indulgent to the mildest flirtation
of Lavinia.
I fancy that poor princess--after listening to a long, intensely proper
discourse from her immaculate husband, or when the young Iulus had been
unusually disagreeable--gazing wistfully in the direction where, against
the sky-line, rose the clump of plane-trees, under which hot-headed,
warm-hearted Turnus was resting after his brief life of storms. Then she
would think of that unhappy mother who, with every impulse of a willful
nature, loved her child so dearly, till she would begin to doubt--it was
very wrong of her--if Amata or the match-making gods were most right
after all.
The neighboring peasantry regarded Mohun with mingled dislike and
terror--a feeling which was increased tenfold by an event which occurred
about three years before my visit, in the height of the agrarian
troubles. I can not do better than give it, as near as I can, in the
words of one who was an actor in the scene.