Sybella Kellett was less than just when she said that the country
which lay between the Hermitage and Bantry Bay had few claims to the
picturesque. It may possibly have been that she spoke with reference to
what she fancied might have been Mr. Hankes's judgment of such a scene.
There was, indeed, little to please an English eye,--no rich and waving
woods, no smiling corn-fields, no expanse of swelling lawn or upland of
deep meadow; but there was a wild and grand desolation, a waving surface
fissured with deep clefts opening on the sea, which boomed in many a
cavern far beneath. There were cliffs upright as a wall, hundreds of
feet in height, on whose bare summits some rude remains were still
traceable,--the fragment of a church, or shrine, or some lone cross,
symbol of a faith that dated from centuries back. Heaths of many a
gorgeous hue--purple, golden, and azure--clad a surface ever changing,
and ferns that would have overtopped a tall horseman mingled their
sprayey leaves with the wild myrtle and the arbutus. The moon was at her
full as Sybella, accompanied by Mr. Hankes, and followed by an old and
faithful groom,--a servant of her father's in times past,--took her way
across this solitary tract.
If my reader is astonished that Mr. Hankes should have offered himself
for such an expedition, it is but fair to state that the surprise was
honestly shared in by that same gentleman. Was it that he made the offer
in some moment of rash enthusiasm; had any impulse of wild chivalry
mastered his calmer reason; was it that curious tendency which
occasionally seems to sway Cockney natures to ascend mountains, cross
dangerous ledges, or peep into volcanic craters? I really cannot aver
that any of these was his actual motive, while I have my suspicion that
a softer, a gentler, though a deeper sentiment influenced him on this
occasion. Mr. Hankes--to use a favorite phrase of his own--“had frequent
occasion to remark” Miss Kellett's various qualities of mind and
intelligence; he had noticed in her the most remarkable aptitude
for “business.” She wrote and answered letters with a facility quite
marvellous; details, however complicated, became by her treatment simple
and easy; no difficulties seemed to deter her; and she possessed a
gift--one of the rarest and most valuable of all--never to waste a
moment on the impracticable, but to address herself, with a sort of
intuition, at once, to only such means as could be rendered available.
Now, whether it was that Mr. Hankes anticipated a time when Mr. Dunn,
in his greatness, might soar above the meaner cares of a business
life,--when, lifted into the Elysian atmosphere of the nobility, he
would look down with contemptuous apathy at the straggles and cares of
enterprise,--or whether Mr. Hankes, from sources of knowledge available
peculiarly to himself, knew that the fortunes of that great man were
not built upon an eternal foundation, but shared in that sad lot which
threatens all things human with vicissitude; whether stern facts and
sterner figures taught him that all that splendid reputation, all that
boundless influence, all that immense riches, might chance, one day or
other, to be less real, less actual, and less positive than the world
now believed them to be; whether, in a word, Mr. Hankes felt that
Fortune, having smiled so long and so blandly on her favorite, might
not, with that capriciousness so generally ascribed to her, assume
another and very different aspect,--whatever the reason, in short, he
deemed the dawn of his own day was approaching, and that, if only true
to himself, Mr. Hankes was sure to be the man of the “situation,”--the
next great star in the wide hemisphere that stretches from the Stock
Exchange to--the Marshalsea, and includes all from Belgravia to
Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Miss Kellett's abilities, her knowledge, her readiness, her tact, a
certain lightness of hand in the management of affairs that none but a
woman ever possesses, and scarcely one woman in ten thousand combines
with the more male attributes of hard common-sense, pointed her out to
Mr. Hankes as one eminently suited to aid his ambition. Now, men married
for money every day in the week; and why not marry for what secured not
alone money, but fame, station, and influence? Mr. Hankes was a widower;
his own experience of married life had not been fortunate. The late Mrs.
Hankes was a genius, and had the infirmities of that unsocial class; she
despised her husband, quarrelled with him, lampooned him in a book,
and ran off with the editor of a small weekly review that eulogized her
novel. It was supposed she died in Australia,--at least, she never
came back again; and as the first lieutenant gravely confirms the sun's
altitude when he mutters, “Make it noon,” so Mr. Hankes, by as simple
a fiat, said, “Make her dead,” and none disputed him. At all events, he
was a widower by brevet, and eligible to be gazetted a husband at any
moment.
Miss Kellett possessed many personal attractions, nor was he altogether
insensible to them; but he regarded them, after all, pretty much as
the intended purchaser of an estate might have regarded an ornamental
fish-pond or a flower-garden on the property,--something, in short,
which increased the attraction, but never augmented the value. He was
glad they were there, though they by no means would have decided him to
the purchase. He knew, besides, that the world set a high price on these
things, and he was not sorry to possess what represented value of any
kind. It was always scrip, shares, securities, even, although one could
not well say how, when, or where the dividend was to be paid.
There was another consideration, too, weighed materially with him. The
next best thing, in Mr. Hankes's estimation, to marrying into a good
connection, was to have none at all,--no brothers, no sisters-in-law,
no cousins-german or otherwise, no uncles, aunts, or any good friends of
parental degree. Now, except a brother in the Crimea,--with an excellent
chance of being killed,--Sybella had none belonging to her. In the happy
phrase of advertisements, she had no encumbrances. There was no one to
insist upon this or that settlement; none to stipulate for anything
in her favor; and these were, to his thinking, vast advantages. Out of
these various considerations our reader is now to fashion some of the
reasons which induced Mr. Hankes to undertake an excursion alike foreign
to his taste and uncongenial to his habits; but as a placeman would not
decline the disagreeables of a sea-voyage as the preliminary to reaching
the colony he was to govern, so this gentleman consoled himself by
thinking that it was the sole penalty attached to a very remunerative
ambition.
If Sybella was not without some astonishment at his proposal to
accompany her, she never gave herself the slightest trouble to explain
the motive. She acceded to his wish from natural courtesy and the desire
to oblige, and that was all. He had been uniformly polite and civil
in all their intercourse; beyond that, he was not a person whose
companionship she would have sought or cared for, and so they rode
along, chatting indifferently of whatever came uppermost,--the scene,
the road, the season, the condition of the few people who formed the
inhabitants of this wild region, and how their condition might possibly
be affected by the great changes then in progress near them.
Guarded and cautious as he was in all he said, Mr. Hankes could not
entirely conceal how completely he separated, in his own mind, the
success of the great scheme and the advantage that might accrue to the
people; nor was she slow to detect this reservation. She took too true
and just a view of her companion's temper and tone to approach this
theme with the scruples that agitated herself, but at once said,--
“Let us suppose this scheme to be as prosperous as its best friends
can wish it, Mr. Hankes; that you all--I mean you great folk, who are
directors, chairmen, secretaries, and so forth--become as rich and
powerful as you desire, see your shares daily increasing in value, your
speculations more and more lucrative, what becomes of the people--the
poor man--all this while?”
“Why, of course he participates in all these successes; he grows rich
too; he sells what he has to sell at a better market, obtains higher
wages for his labor, and shares all our prosperity.”
“Granted. But who is to teach him the best use of this newly acquired
prosperity? You, and others like you, have your tastes already formed;
the channels are already made in which your affluence is to run: not so
with him; abundance may--nay, it will--suggest waste, which will beget
worse. Who are to be his guides,--who his examples?”
“Oh, as to that, his increase of fortune will suggest its own
appropriate increase of wants. He will be elevated by the requirements
of his own advancing condition, and even if he were not, it is not
exactly any affair of ours; we do our part when we afford him the means
of a higher civilization.”
“I don't think so. I suspect that not alone do you neglect a duty, but
that you inflict a wrong. But come, I will take another alternative; I
will suggest--what some are already predicting--that the project will
not prove a success.”
“Who says that?” cried Hankes, hastily, and in his haste forgetting his
habitual caution of manner.
“Many have said it. Some of those whose opinions I am accustomed
to place trust in, have told myself that the speculation is too
vast,--disproportioned to the country, undertaken on a scale which
nothing short of imperial resources could warrant--”
“But surely you do not credit such forebodings?” broke he in.
“It is of little consequence how far _I_ credit them. I am as nothing
in the event. I only would ask, What if all were to fail?--what if ruin
were to fall upon the whole undertaking, what is to become of all those
who have invested their entire fortunes in the scheme? The great and
affluent have many ventures,--they trust not their wealth to one
argosy; but how will it be with those who have embarked their all in one
vessel?”
Mr. Hankes paused, as if to reflect over his reply, and she continued:
“It is a question I have already dared to address to Mr. Dunn himself. I
wrote to him twice on the subject. The first time I asked what guarantee
could be given to small shareholders,--those, for instance, who had
involved their whole wealth in the enterprise. He gave me no answer.
To my second application came the dry rejoinder that I had possibly
forgotten in whose service I was retained; that I drew my resources from
the Earl of Glengariff, and not from the peasantry, whose advocate I had
constituted myself.”
“Well?” cried Hankes, curious to hear what turn the correspondence took.
“Well,” said she, smiling gently, “I wrote again. I said it was true I
had forgotten the fact of which he reminded me, but I pleaded in excuse
that neither the Earl nor her Ladyship had refreshed my memory on the
circumstance by any replies to eight, or, I believe, nine letters I sent
them. I mentioned, too, that though I could endure the slight of this
neglect for myself, I could not put up with it for the sake of those
whose interest I watched over. Hear me out,” said she, perceiving that
he was about to interrupt. “It had become known in Glengariff that all
the little fortune I was possessed of--the few hundred pounds Mr. Dunn
had rescued for me out of the wreck of our property--was invested in
this scheme. Mr. Dunn counselled this employment of the money, and I
consented to it. Now, this trustfulness on my part induced many others
to imitate what they deemed my example.”
“And you really did make this investment?” said Hankes, whose eagerness
could not brook longer delay.
“Yes,” said she, with a quiet smile, “though, evidently, had I consulted
Mr. Hankes, he would never have counselled the step.” After a moment,
she resumed, “I have half a mind to tell you how it happened.”
“I pray you let me hear it.”
“Well, it was in this way: Shortly after that affair of the Ossory
Bank,--the run for gold, I mean,--I received a few hurried lines from
Mr. Dunn, urging me to greater exertion on the score of the Glengariff
scheme, and calling upon me to answer certain newspaper insinuations
against its solvency, and so forth. Before replying to these attacks,
I was, of course, bound to read them; and, shall I confess it, such was
the singular force of the arguments they employed, so reasonable did
their inferences appear, and so terrible the consequences should the
plan prove a failure, that I for the first time perceived that it was
by no means impossible the vast superstructure we were raising might be
actually on the brink of a volcano. I did not like exactly to tell Mr.
Dunn these misgivings; in fact, though I attempted two or three letters
to that effect, I could not, without great risk of offending, convey my
meaning, and so I reflected and pondered over the matter several days,
working my brain to find some extrication from the difficulty. At last,
I bethought me of this: Mr. Dunn was my guardian; by his efforts was the
small fragment of property that fell to me rescued and saved. What if I
were to request him to invest the whole of it in this scheme? Were its
solvency but certain, where could the employment of the money be safer
or more profitable? If he consented, I might fairly suppose my fears
were vain, and my misgivings unfounded. If, however, he showed any
reluctance, even backwardness, to the project, the very phrase he might
employ to dissuade me would have its especial significance, and I could
at once have something to reason upon. Well, I wrote to him, and he
answered by the next post: 'I fully coincide with your suggestion, and,
acting on it, you are now the possessor of fifty-four shares in the
allotment. As the moment for buying in is favorable, it is a thousand
pities you could not make an equally profitable investment for your
brother, whose twelve hundred pounds is yielding the very inglorious
interest of the bank.'”
“And so you took the shares?” said Hankes, sighing; then added, “But let
me see,--at what rate did you buy?”
“I am ashamed to confess, I forget; but I know the shares were high?”
“After the Ossory run,” muttered he,--“that was about September. Shares
were then something like one hundred and twenty-seven and a quarter;
higher afterwards; higher the whole month of November; shaky towards
the end of the year; very shaky, indeed, in January. No, no,” said he to
himself, “Dunn ought not to have done it.”
“I perceive,” said she, half smiling, “Mr. Hankes opines that the money
had been better in the bank.”
“After all,” continued he, not heeding her remark, “Dunn could n't do
anything else. You own, yourself, that if he had attempted to dissuade
you, you would immediately have taken alarm; you 'd have said, 'This
is all a sham. All these people will find themselves “let in” some fine
morning;' and as Dunn could very readily make good your few hundred
pounds, why, he was perfectly justified in the advice he gave.”
“Not when his counsel had the effect of influencing mine,” said she,
quickly; “not when it served to make me a perfidious example to others.
No, no, Mr. Hankes; if this scheme be not an honest and an upright one,
I accept no partnership in its details.”
“I am only putting a case, remember,” said Hankes, hurriedly,--“a
possible, but most improbable case. I am supposing that a scheme with
the finest prospectus, the best list of directors, the most respectable
referees in the empire, to be--what shall I say?--to be sickly,--yes,
sickly,--in want of a little tonic treatment, generous diet, and so
forth.”
“You 'll have to follow me here, Mr. Hankes,” broke in Sybella; “the
pathway round this cliff only admits one at a time. Keep close to the
rock, and if your head be not steady, don't look down.”
“Good heavens! we are not going round that precipice!” cried Hankes, in
a voice of the wildest terror.
“My servant will lead your horse, if you prefer it,” said she, without
answering his question; “and mind your footing, for the moss is often
slippery with the spray.”
Sybella made a signal with her whip to the groom, who was now close
behind, and then, without awaiting for more, moved on. Hankes watched
her as she descended the little slope to the base of a large rock,
around which the path wound itself on the very verge of an immense
precipice. Even from where he now stood the sea could be seen surging
and booming hundreds of feet below; and although the night was calm and
still, the ever-restless waves beat heavily against the rocks, and sent
masses of froth and foam high into the air. He saw her till she turned
the angle of the path, and then she was lost to his view.
“I don't think I have head for it. I 'm not used to this kind of thing,”
said Hankes, in a voice of helpless despondency to the old groom, who
now stood awaiting him to dismount “Is there much danger? Is it as bad
as it looks?”
“'Tis worse when you get round the rock there,” said the groom, “for
it's always going down you are, steeper than the roof of a house, with a
shingle footing, and sloping outwards.”
“I'll not go a step; I 'll not venture,” broke in Hankes.
“Indeed, I wouldn't advise your honor,” said the man, in a tone too
sincere to be deemed sarcastic.
“I know my head could n't bear it,” said he, with the imploring accents
of one who entreated a contradiction. But the old groom, too fully
convinced of the sentiment to utter a word against it, was now only
thinking of following his mistress.
[Illustration: 191]
“Wait a moment,” cried Hankes, with an immense effort. “If I were
once across this”--he was going to add an epithet, but restrained
himself--“this place, is there nothing more of the same kind
afterwards?”
“Is n't there, faith!” cried the man. “Isn't there the Clunk, where the
beast has to step over gullies five-and-thirty or forty feet deep? Isn't
there Tim's Island, a little spot where you must turn your horse round
with the sea four hundred feet under you? Is n't there the Devil's
Nose--”
“There, there, you need n't go on, my good fellow; I 'll turn back.”
“Look where she is now,” said the man, pointing with his whip to a rocky
ledge hundreds of feet down, along which a figure on horseback might be
seen creeping slowly along. “'Tis there, where she's stealing along now,
you need the good head and the quick hand. May I never!” exclaimed he,
in terror, “if them isn't goats that's coming up to meet her! Merciful
Joseph! what'll she do? There, they are under the horse's legs, forcing
their way through! Look how the devils are rushing all round and about
her! If the beast moves an inch--” A wild cry broke from the old man
here, for a fragment of rock, displaced by the rushing herd, had just
come thundering down the cliff, and splashed into the sea beneath. “The
heavens be praised! she's safe,” muttered he, piously crossing himself;
and then, without a word more, and as if angry at his own delay, he
pressed his horse forward to follow her.
It was in vain Hankes cried to him to wait,--to stop for only an
instant,--that he, too, was ready to go,--not to leave him and desert
him there,--that he knew not where to turn him, nor could ever retrace
his way,--already the man was lost to view and hearing, and all the
vain entreaties were uttered to the winds. As for Sybella, her perilous
pathway gave her quite enough to do not to bestow a thought upon her
companion; nor, indeed, had she much recollection of him till the old
groom overtook her on the sandy beach, and recounted to her, not without
a certain touch of humor, Mr. Hankes's terror and despair.
“It was cruel to leave him, Ned,” said she, trying to repress a smile
at the old man's narrative. “I think you must go back, and leave me to
pursue my way alone.”
“Sorra one o' me will go back to the likes of him. 'T is for your own
self, and ne'er another, I'd be riskin' my neck in the same spot,” said
he, resolutely.
“But what's to become of him, Ned? He knows nothing of the country; he
'll not find his way back to Glengariff.”
“Let him alone; devil a harm he 'll come to. 'T is chaps like that never
comes to mischief. He 'll wander about there till day breaks, and
maybe find his way to Duffs Mill, or, at all events, the boy with the
letter-bag from Caherclough is sure to see him.”
Even had this last assurance failed to satisfy Sybella, it was so
utterly hopeless a task to overrule old Ned's resolve that she said
no more, but rode on in silence. Not so Ned; the theme afforded him an
opportunity for reflecting on English character and habits which was not
to be lost.
“I 'd like to see your brother John turn back and leave a young lady
that way,” said he, recurring to the youth whose earliest years he had
watched over.
No matter how impatiently, even angrily, Bella replied to the old man's
bigoted preference of his countrymen, Ned persisted in deploring the
unhappy accident by which fate had subjected the finer and more gifted
race to the control and dominion of an inferior people. To withdraw
him effectually from a subject which to an Irish peasant has special
attraction, she began to tell him of the war in the East and of
her brother Jack, the old man listening with eager delight to the
achievements of one he had carried about in his arms as a child. Her
mind filled with the wondrous stories of private letters,--the intrepid
daring of this one, the noble chivalry of that,--she soon succeeded in
winning all his attention. It was singular, however, that of all the
traits she recorded, none made such a powerful appeal to the old man's
heart as the generous self-devotion of those women who, leaving home,
friends, country, and all, gave themselves up to the care of the sick
and wounded. He never wearied of hearing how they braved death in its
most appalling shape amidst the pestilential airs of the hospital, in
the midst of such horrors as no pen can picture, taking on them the most
painful duties, accepting fatigue, exhaustion, and peril as the common
incidents of life, braving scenes of agony such as in very recital
sickened the heart, descending to all that was menial in their
solicitude for some poor sufferer, and all this with a benevolence and
a kindness that made them seem less human beings than ministering angels
from heaven.
“Oh, Holy Joseph! is n't it yourself ought to be there?” cried the old
man, enthusiastically. “Was there ever your like to give hope to a sick
heart? Who ever could equal you to cheer up the sinking spirit, and even
make misery bearable? Miss Bella, darling, did you never think of going
out?”
“Ay, Ned, a hundred times,” said she, sighing drearily. “I often, too,
said to myself, There's not one of these ladies--for they are ladies
born and bred--who has n't a mother, father, sisters, and brothers dear
to her, and to whom she is herself dear. She leaves a home where she is
loved, and where her vacant place is daily looked at with sorrow; and
yet here am I, who have none to care for, none to miss me, who would
carry over the sea with me no sorrows from those I was leaving, for I am
friendless,--surely I am well fitted for such a task--”
“Well,” said he, eagerly, as she seemed to hesitate, “well, and why--”
“It was not fear held me back,” resumed she. “It was not that I shrank
from the sights and sounds of agony that must have been more terrible
than any death; it was simply a hope--a wish, perhaps, more than a
hope--that I might be doing service to those at home here, who, if
I were to leave them, would not have one on their side. Perhaps I
overrated what I did, or could do; perhaps I deemed my help of more
value than it really was; but every day seemed to show me that the
people needed some one to counsel and to guide them,--to show them
where their true interests lay, and by what little sacrifices they could
oftentimes secure a future benefit.”
“That's thrue, every word of it. Your name is in every cabin, with a
blessing tacked to it. There's not a child does n't say a prayer for you
before he goes to sleep; and there's many a grown man never thought of
praying at all till he axed a blessing for yourself!”
“With that, too,” resumed she, “was coupled power, for my Lord left much
to my management. I was able to help the deserving, to assist the
honest and industrious; now I aided this one to emigrate, now I could
contribute a little assistance of capital. In fact, Ned, I felt they
wanted me, and I knew I liked _them_. There was one good reason for not
going away. Then there were other reasons,” said she, falteringly. “It
is not a good example to give to others to leave, no matter how humble,
the spot where we have a duty, to seek out a higher destiny. I speak as
a woman.”
“And is it thrue, Miss Bella, that it's Mister Dunn has it all here
under his own hand,--that the Lord owns nothing only what Dunn allows
him, and that the whole place down to Kenmare River is Dunn's?”
“It is quite true, Ned, that the control and direction of all the great
works here are with Mr. Dunn. All the quarries and mines, the roads,
harbors, quays, 'bridges, docks, houses, are all in his hands.”
“Blessed hour! and where does he get the money to do it all?” cried he,
in amazement.
Now, natural as was the question, and easy of reply as it seemed,
Sybella heard it with something almost like a shock. Had the thought not
occurred to her hundreds of times? And, if so, how had she answered
it? Of course there could be no difficulty in the reply; of course such
immense speculations, such gigantic projects as Mr. Dunn engaged in,
supplied wealth to any amount. But equally true was it, that they
demanded great means; they were costly achievements,--these great lines
of railroad, these vast harbors. Nor were they always successful; Mr.
Hankes himself had dropped hints about certain “mistakes” that were very
significant. The splendid word “Credit” would explain it all, doubtless,
but how interpret credit to the mind of the poor peasant? She tried to
illustrate it by the lock of a canal, in which the water is momentarily
utilized for a particular purpose, and then restored, unimpaired, to the
general circulation; but Ned unhappily damaged the imagery by remarking,
“But what's to be done if there's no water?” Fortunately for her logic,
the road became once more only wide enough for one to proceed at a time,
and Sybella was again left to her own musings.
Scarcely conscious of the perilous path by which she advanced, she
continued to meditate over the old man's words, and wonder within
herself how it was that he, the poor, unlettered peasant, should have
conceived that high notion of what her mission ought to be,--when and
how her energies should be employed. She had been schooling herself for
years to feel that true heroism consisted in devoting oneself to some
humble, unobtrusive career, whose best rewards were the good done to
others, where self-denial was a daily lesson, and humility a daily
creed; but, do what she could, there was within her heart the embers of
the fire that burned there in childhood. The first article of that
faith taught her that without danger there is no greatness,--that in
the hazardous conflicts where life is ventured, high qualities only are
developed. What but such noble excitement could make heroes of those
men, many of whom, without such stimulus, had dropped down the stream of
life unnoticed and undistinguished? “And shall I,” cried she, aloud,
“go on forever thus, living the small life of petty cares and interests,
confronting no dangers beyond a dark December day, encountering no other
hazards than the flippant rebuke of my employer?” “There's the yawl,
Miss Bella; she's tacking about, waiting for us,” said Ned, as he
pointed to a small sailboat like a speck in the blue sea beneath; and at
the same instant a little rag of scarlet bunting was run up to the peak,
to show that the travellers had been seen from the water.