SEVEN YEARS AFTER.
High noon once again at Kingslough; high noon, with a leaden sky, a
drizzling rain falling, the streets ankle deep in mud, the side paths
sloppy and dirty.
Altogether a miserable noon—the sea out a long way, as was its wont to
go at Kingslough when low tide-time came; an expanse of grey,
sad-looking shore; the water still and sullen; the hills the only bit of
colour in the landscape, for the foliage of the fir-trees in the distant
woods looked almost black by contrast with the leafless branches amongst
which they reared their heads.
No sunlight dancing on the waves; no shifting shadows succeeded by
bright patches of brightness coming and going upon the uplands; no
mellow haze softening the distance; no purple bloom softening the scene
into a dream of fairyland. At the foot of its hills, Kingslough lay
crouching and shivering its houses together; houses in which every blind
in the lower windows was drawn close, or the shutters closed, in token
of—respect, the people would have said.
Let the word go for what it was worth. It could not now matter to Lord
Glendare—in evidence of whose death the weather itself seemed to have
put on mourning—whether the men he had ground down into the earth loved
or hated, respected or despised, his memory.
He was gone—by the road winding inland, along the Glendare
Parade—closely-shut houses on one side, and the dark, bare shore, with
the leaden-coloured sea reflecting a leaden sky, on the other—up the
steep hillside they were about to bear the mortal remains of the earl to
their last earthly home.
Nearly seven years had passed since his previous visit to Ireland, and
during that time progress set a weak, uncertain foot, even in
Kingslough.
Men had arisen who, from first whispering doubts of the Glendare
infallibility, gradually grew bolder, and at length openly proclaimed
the new doctrine, that property has its duties, and that the human
being, be he of gentle birth or of simple, to whom many talents have
been given, must account some day for the use made of those talents, if
not at any human tribunal, before the throne of God.
To those who had been accustomed to regard themselves as relieved from
all responsibility by the act of God Himself; who believed in the divine
right of landlords to do what they liked with their own; who had never
regarded the people save as so much raw material, out of which rent and
renewal fines were to be extracted—easily and kindly if possible—with
difficulty and harshness should necessity arise; to those, in a word,
who, like the Glendares, had been living on the edge of a social
precipice, the increasing murmurs of discontent fell on their ears as a
sound of impossible, yet uncomfortable, prophecy.
They had been Glendares since the time of that careless, selfish English
trooper; they had been great people; they had lived on the fat of the
land; they had ruffled it with the best; the fairest women had smiled
upon them; men of rank equal to their own, of better birth, of stricter
principles, had condoned the faults and sins of their false, bad race,
for the sake of the charms of person and the grace of manner which
distinguished all of the name; and could it be—could it that an end was
to come to the pleasant vices paid for by the sweat of toiling peasants,
the prematurely old faces of anxious wives, the feeble though willing
work of little children, who were turned out of their cradles into the
fields to help to make up the rent?
Had noon come and gone, and were the evening shadows already darkening
the fair landscape? Was the day in which their fellows greeted them with
smiles, and paid them honour, drawing to an end, and a night, dark and
starless, closing in around a House which had ruled despotically for so
long and so ill.
As is usual, the signs of the times were first made apparent in
increased difficulties of obtaining money or credit. So to speak, the
murmurs of dissatisfaction grew into words, which could be distinguished
by the ears of the earl, if by no other members of the family.
Never had a Glendare been so deeply involved in debt as he; never had a
Glendare been so short of that which should enable him to clear his
debts, even temporarily. One generation had gone on pushing its burdens
on the next. Long leases, sometimes for nine hundred and ninety-nine
years, had been granted by successive proprietors at disastrously small
rents, for the sake of a “lump sum down,” which sum vanished like “snow
off a dyke.” Lands had been sold, rights conceded. Almost everything
available with which the Glendares could part had been leased or sold or
mortgaged.
Fortunes were being made out of streams, moors, building-sites, houses,
and farms the Glendares had parted with, under the pressure of
importunate creditors, for an old song.
No young sprig of nobility ever made worse bargains with professed
money-lenders than successive earls with men who were wise enough to
take advantage of the Somerford necessities. Agent after agent had
fattened on the spoil; some of them, catching the infection of their
betters, spent their money recklessly, and came again, or their families
after them, to indigence. Some went to England and did well there;
others, again, bought properties in distant parts of Ireland, and set up
in the land-owning business for themselves; all, at any rate—however
they spent their money—had a pull out of the Glendare purse, as the
state of the Glendare purse could testify.
The mismanagement, the profuse expenditure, the eating the calf before
birth, the depredations of outsiders, had continued for a long time, but
it was impossible the game could be carried on for ever.
The end was coming; the murmurs of a once voiceless people, rising at
length into a hoarse low cry of discontent, reached even to London, and,
together with the remonstrances of lawyers and agents and the demands
and entreaties of duns, told the earl that, unless he and his reformed
their ways, reduced their outgoings and came down a little from their
high estate, they would have to sink altogether and drop a title and a
rank they had no longer wealth to maintain.
“It is hard upon me in my old age,” said the earl to himself with that
self-pity which would be ludicrous were it not almost pathetic, which
those who have never showed pity to others always extend to
themselves—“old, broken, weighed down by trouble, with one foot in the
grave”—but here the soliloquy ended. The ideas it expressed seemed too
true to form pleasant food even for self-pity. The years “few and evil”
were drawing to a close, and the prospect of having both feet laid in
the grave was as little agreeable to his lordship as it proves to most
of those who have loved this world, its sins, its pomps, and its
pleasures passing well.
“It all began when Arthur went,” he said one day to Lady Glendare; and
certainly, since the death of his favourite son, trouble and the earl
had not walked on different sides of life’s highway. Petty annoyances,
grave anxieties, family trials, succeeded each other as though all were
part of a giant army gathered to annihilate an enemy.
Save Henry—the heir—he was childless, and one of his sons had before his
departure, dragged even the Glendare name through such disreputable
places that the world could scarcely put on a show of decent sympathy
with his parents when his career was cut short.
Henry the earl did not love—or loved, to speak more correctly, after the
fashion in which men usually love those who are born to wear their shoes
after them—and Henry had not much affection to spare for his father.
Nevertheless, he had been ready enough to join him in granting leases,
and cutting off part of the entail, until he discovered that far more
than the lion’s portion of the spoil was finding its way into the earl’s
pocket.
Some one enlightened that overwise young man on this point; my lady
declared the some one was Robert Somerford, whom she now hated with that
impotent hatred only a weak vain woman can entertain towards a man who,
through the deaths of her children, stands a few feet nearer rank and
wealth; and the result was, that the next time the earl asked his son to
join him in some fresh work of destruction, his son flatly refused to do
anything of the kind.
“There has been enough of this suicidal policy in the family already,”
said the young man with an air of withering superiority, “and I for one
will be no party to its continuance.”
“But, Henry, you are as much in want of money as I am, and I only ask
you to do for and with me what I did for my father,” urged the earl.
“What you may have chosen to do for your father is beside the question,”
was the reply. “I have quite made up my mind as to the course I intend
to take. It is true I am in want of money, but, on the whole, I find the
Jews cheaper than your lordship”—
Whereupon his lordship ordered him to leave the house, and there being
reasons why London was at that time not so agreeable a residence as it
might have have been to the future earl, he went to visit his relatives
at Rosemont—
Who now consisted, by marriage and otherwise, of Mr. Robert Somerford,
Mrs. Somerford translated into Mrs. Dillwyn, and her husband, Mr.
Dillwyn.
The news of the proposed matrimonial alliance had electrified Kingslough
six years previously. That Mr. Dillwyn should propose! that Mrs.
Somerford should consent!—so the sentences of wonderment ran, while
gossips lifted their hands—whilst ladies eligible as to spinsterhood,
though not equally so as to age, wondered what the agent could be
thinking about to marry a woman older than himself, and she a
widow—whilst men shook their heads and said, “Dillwyn was not born
yesterday.”
“What will the earl do under the circumstances?” people
inquired—meaning, Would the earl dismiss his agent, or receive him into
the bosom of the Glendare family? would he give the bride-elect notice
to leave Rosemont, or would he ask her and the bridegroom to spend part
of the honeymoon in London?
Popular opinion inclined to the belief that Mr. Dillwyn would have to
leave his situation and deliver up his papers, and had Lady Glendare’s
wishes been followed, a line hard and fast had then been drawn between
the earl and the occupants of Rosemont; but her wishes were not
followed, and not only was Mrs. Somerford allowed to remain at Rosemont,
but Mr. Dillwyn was permitted to take up his abode there with her.
He offered to pay a rent for the mansion and grounds, and, to his secret
satisfaction, Lord Glendare accepted his offer. When Henry Lord Trevor
came of age, almost one of his first acts was, with his father, to grant
a long lease of Rosemont to the agent.
“But remember, Dillwyn, Rosemont is still to be our home when we come to
Ireland,” said the earl; and Mr. Dillwyn agreed, nothing loth.
He had counted the cost of his plan before carrying it into practice,
and the cost included maintaining his noble relatives on the few
occasions they might choose to honour Ireland with their company.
As for Mr. Robert Somerford, he did not like Mr. Dillwyn, but he did not
dislike the match. It gave him a much more comfortable home than had
hitherto fallen to his lot, money in his purse, power to travel, and, to
a certain extent, maintain his proper position in the world.
There were pecuniary ease and comparative affluence amongst the trio who
lived there.
Mr. Dillwyn was well to do, and carefully trying to be better, but he
acted towards his stepson with a liberality which at last elicited some
astonished, if not grateful, remark from the younger man.
“It is not right you should be mewed up in a remote country house
through the best years of your life,” answered Mr. Dillwyn; “you ought
to see the world, and become fitted for a position beyond that of a mere
dependant. It is on the cards you may one day be Earl of Glendare
yourself.”
With an amazement too swift and genuine to be assumed, Mr. Somerford,
looking eagerly in the agent’s face, asked him what he meant.
“Precisely what I say,” answered Mr. Dillwyn. “Count your chances, and
see what stands between you and the title.”
There was a pause; then Mr. Somerford, having presumably counted the
chances and found them in his favour, said,—
“You calculated on this when you married my mother.”
“I did, Mr. Somerford,” was the reply, as calmly uttered as though there
had been no sting contained in the sentence, no scorn in the tone. “A
man must marry for something—love, money, interest. Your mother married
me because she was sick of existing on her wretched pittance of a
jointure, because she believed I might assist you. I married her because
I had reasons to believe you might one day be able to serve me; because
I knew the match must strengthen my position with the earl. There was no
question of love in the matter, no pretence of anything beyond respect;”
and Mr. Dillwyn stopped, thinking evidently his stepson ought to be
perfectly satisfied with the explanation vouchsafed.
But Mr. Somerford’s vanity had received a blow which a much longer and
more plausible explanation might have failed to soothe.
He had thought, honestly and sincerely, that the honour of an alliance
with a member of his family was more than an equivalent for Mr.
Dillwyn’s good looks, comparative youth, unquestionable ability, and
wealth acquired—no one exactly understood how; and now to be told that,
instead of an open, the man had been playing an underhand, game—with
himself as probable ace of trumps hidden up his sleeve all the time—was
more than he could endure.
“So that was your motive?” he began quietly, drawing in his breath at
the end of his sentence, as the wind lulls for a moment before the storm
breaks forth in its fury.
With all their amiability the Somerfords had tempers, and knew on
occasions how to exhibit them; and the years spent in association with
the family had not been passed by Mr. Dillwyn altogether in vain.
Well, at any rate, he understood what the lowering of Mr. Robert’s voice
and the compression of his lips portended, and so hastened to avert the
threatened hurricane.
“I have shown you my hand,” he began. “Do not let us quarrel about the
honours I hold till we are quite sure they will win. Do not speak that
which is in your mind unless you are satisfied it will be to your
interest to quarrel with me. I tell you it is your interest to keep me
as your friend. If the Glendare estates, or any part of them, are to be
saved, which is problematical, I am the only person who can tell you how
to save them. If without the estates you are ever to keep your head
above water, I am the only person able to show you the way.”
“I ought to be the last person to question your ability to compass
anything on which you set your mind,” said Mr. Somerford, “but I do not
feel at all disposed to allow you to exercise your talents in the
management of my affairs.”
“When you have affairs to manage, it will be time enough to discuss that
question,” retorted the agent. “Meanwhile, if I did make a throw for
fortune and position, remember what I staked upon it. I burdened
myself—I use the word advisedly, Robert—with a young man utterly
destitute, with a lady worthy of all esteem, but no longer even in the
prime of middle life, while between you and the possibility of the title
stood how many? The Glendares, I believe, always expect people to give
them something for nothing; to waste their health, strength, money, in
the unselfish desire to give them pleasure; but if you have taken up any
false ideas of that kind with regard to me, disabuse your mind of it as
fast as you can. It is of no use scowling. I will work with you or
against you; only say whether we are to be friends or foes, and I will
order my course accordingly.”
“You are wondrous plain, sir, all of a sudden,” said Mr. Somerford with
a sneer.
“I am wondrous true, considering the nature of the man to whom I am
speaking,” replied Mr. Dillwyn.
“There is no necessity for you to favour me with an analysis of my
character,” returned the younger man; “I think we understand each other
without going into particulars. It seems we must row together, or swim
separate. Is not that the English of the confidence you have forced upon
me? Yes; well, that being the case, and having no taste for salt water,
I agree to let bygones be bygones, and take my chance with you.”
“Meaning that we are to be friends?”
“If you attach any importance to the expression, yes.”
“Will you give me your hand upon it?”
“Having given my word, I should have imagined the other form
unnecessary; but as you wish——” and he held out his hand, which Mr.
Dillwyn clasped hard for a moment.
Then he loosed it, saying, “That is a bargain.”
“Agreed,” answered Mr. Somerford carelessly; and he went off, humming an
opera air.
“I would not give much for my hopes if you were once king,” muttered the
agent, as he watched his retreating figure. “Drivelling idiots
all—cruel, selfish, vain, inconsequent fools—earl, heir, nephew. What
could his mother have been thinking of when she brought such a
short-sighted simpleton into a world already overweighted with
simpletons? Well, forewarned forearmed, and when it comes to a stand-up
fight between us we shall see which man has best made ready for battle.
He has gone to Bayview I suppose. Ah, Grace! you had better have taken
me. Even if he comes to be earl, you will find a coronet cannot
compensate for the want of both head and heart.”
Whereby hung a tale—one never enlarged upon by Grace Moffat. After she
refused her first lover, she never took man, woman, or child into her
full confidence about those who came after.
It was to this united household Henry Lord Trevor, after the
unpleasantness with his father, came. Sympathy in abundance he received
from all the inmates of Rosemont, to say nothing of that which he valued
far more than sympathy—a considerable pecuniary advance from Mr.
Dillwyn, who, playing in those days for high stakes, could not afford to
be over-cautious in his game.
On the whole, the heir-apparent did not dislike Ireland; the almost
fulsome affection displayed by the tenantry, who, growing weary of the
old _régime_, trusted that the “young lord, bless him!” would reduce
their rents, and find money for improvements, was not unpleasant to one
of a family to whom popularity was as the sunshine and the breeze to
mankind in general.
He would not have been a Glendare had he not promised liberally, and
thus he charmed the people and they pleased him. A better shot than his
cousin—a more indefatigable sportsman—he traversed the moors and walked
over the hills in search of game. All in vain, knowing what he knew, Mr.
Dillwyn tried to keep him within bounds (the life of this young man had
suddenly become precious in his eyes); he would not be staid; and so,
with the seeds of a fatal disease lying in his frame, he exposed himself
to rain and storm, and trudged miles through mists that were as the very
breath of death to a constitution such as his.
By Mr. Dillwyn’s advice the breach with Lord Glendare was closed. At his
dictation the heir wrote a letter of apology for the expressions of
which he had made use. After stating how deeply he regretted having
permitted temper to overcome his filial respect, he proceeded to say
that, whilst his views concerning the general impolicy of granting long
leases at nominal rents for the sake of raising amounts utterly
nonequivalent to the benefits conferred, remained unaltered, still, if
any plan were thought of by which his father’s difficulties could be
permanently lessened, he would do all in his power to assist in carrying
it into effect. “For myself,” he went on, “I have already experienced so
much of the ill effects of running into debt, that I feel as though I
could make any sacrifice to set our affairs straight. I should not
object even to take up my residence permanently in Ireland—(he had been
a week in the country, and game was plentiful)—if it were thought
desirable for me to do so. Dillwyn believes a considerable amount might
be raised by granting leases for a certain term to those of the tenants
who hold their land on lives. There has been such a mortality amongst
the members of our family lately, that a feeling of uneasiness is
abroad, and it seems probable that even those persons to whom fresh
leases of this description have been granted since I came of age would
willingly pay a further sum to have their tenancy placed upon a more
secure footing. I may mention one case in illustration of this. Since I
arrived here, Mr. Brady, to whom you may recollect we granted a lease of
the Castle Farm, Scott’s tenancy of which expires at the death of Lady
Jane Somerford, has called to say he is prepared to pay any amount
Dillwyn may consider fair, if we will change the lease from three lives
to ninety-nine years. Evidently he does not think our space of existence
likely to extend to the same term as that of her ladyship.”
The last sentence was not, it is unnecessary to say, prompted by Mr.
Dillwyn. He was not given to sentimentality; nevertheless a grave pity
darkened his eyes as the young man laughingly read it aloud.
“Old ladies have a wonderful knack of living,” he went on. “Now there is
that Miss Riley; she must have been a hundred, twenty years ago.”
“I do not know her age,” Mr. Dillwyn answered; “but Lady Jane Somerford
was ninety-six last June. She has had her share of the Glendare
revenues, no matter who else may have gone short.”
“I wonder who invented life-leases,” remarked the other thoughtfully.
“Some one who liked speculating himself, and understood the love for
speculation, which is an integral part of human nature.”
“But our tenants’ human nature appears eminently non-speculative,” was
the reply.
“As the world grows older, its inhabitants get wiser,” said Mr. Dillwyn.
He could have told his auditor that there would be little of a
speculative character in taking a lease on his life, at all events! but
the agent’s rule had always been to try to make things pleasant, and he
was not going to deviate from it now.
“He may live; who knows?” reflected Mr. Dillwyn; “in a warm climate he
might last for years; but, whether he live or die, if only the earl
agree to my scheme Mr. Robert will find he had better not have tried to
play a double game with me.”
From which remark it will be seen that the agent’s Christianity did not
extend so far as the forgiveness of injuries inflicted or contemplated.
As for the earl, he was only too happy to accept the olive-branch held
out by his son; and as the course suggested by Mr. Dillwyn offered a
chance of raising some money, he came over to Ireland in person to carry
it with greater expedition into effect.
Glad enough was he to leave London and its duns behind him for a season,
and, crouching over the library fire at Rosemont, a bent and broken man,
he assured Mr. Dillwyn, even with tears, that if any arrangement could
be made which might enable him to end his days in peace, he would live
anywhere—he would do anything—he would induce her ladyship to do
anything for the sake of obtaining peace.
“It has been all wrong from beginning to end,” he declared, with a
frankness characteristic of those who, having eaten up the whole of
their cake at once, lament the absence of any hoard from which another
may be obtained. “It has been all a mistake. I ought to have retrenched
years ago; I ought to have come here, or lived abroad. Take warning by
me, Henry, and remember that an extravagant youth means a miserable old
age. Life seemed very happy once—ah! that was a long, long time ago. If
I could but have the past to spend over again, with my present
experience——”
“You would make just as bad a business of your second existence as you
have done of your first,” thought Mr. Dillwyn, while he publicly
observed “that regrets were worse than useless; that what they had now
to consider was, how to surmount present difficulties.”
“By the way,” he went on, “speaking of difficulties, there seems to be
one with Scott of the Castle Farm. He says your lordship promised him a
renewal of his lease, and that he has spent a mint of money on the place
in consequence.”
“The Castle Farm! where is it? what is it?” exclaimed the earl
pettishly. “I wish, Dillwyn, you would not pester me about matters that
lie exclusively in your province. I promise the man a lease? why should
I? And, even if I had, he must have been an idiot to lay out money until
he got it.”
“But he says he gave your lordship money for granting it.”
“Now, what nonsense all this is!” cried the earl angrily. “I don’t know
where the Castle Farm is. I should not know the man Scott if I met him
to-morrow. Why should he bring money to me instead of paying it to you?
What have I ever had to do with the tenants, except at election times?”
“That is the point,” persisted Mr. Dillwyn. “He declares he paid you the
money when you were over at the time of the last election, and that,
therefore, Mr. Brady’s lease is invalid.”
“He must be a fool,” observed the earl in a tone of sincere conviction.
“So I told him,” was Mr. Dillwyn’s reply.
“He has no lease, has he?” asked the earl.
“None excepting that which expires with the life of Lady Jane
Somerford.”
“Then what does the fellow mean?”
“That I really cannot say,” answered the agent.
“Of course, it is all a trumped-up story,” said Lord Somerford.
“Very possibly,” agreed Mr. Dillwyn, and the subject dropped.
Next day, when Amos Scott called at the agent’s office, that gentleman
said to him,—
“Now, look here, Scott—you chose to deal with the earl direct before,
and you must settle this matter with him now. I wash my hands of it. I
don’t understand the transaction, and I don’t want to understand it. The
earl will be up to his ears in business for a few days, but go to
Rosemont, say the early part of next week, and ask to see Lord Trevor. I
will beg him to get you speech of his father.”
“Yer honour’s a hard man, but I thought you would have seen justice done
to me,” said Amos bitterly.
“I cannot do you justice. I tell you I know no more of the matter than
the babe unborn. I will undertake that the earl shall see you; anything
more is beyond my power. However it may be, you have not much cause of
complaint; Lady Jane has lived twenty-six years longer than the time she
ought, and you have had the benefit of her toughness.”
“No thanks either to you or my lord,” answered Amos Scott with a grim
smile.
“Thanks to Providence, who, it is said takes an especial care of fools,”
retorted Mr. Dillwyn. “Come up on Tuesday morning about ten o’clock. I
will speak to Lord Trevor to-night; that is all I can do for you.”
Man proposes, but he cannot dispose. Amos Scott never “had speech” of
Louis Lord Glendare, who, before Tuesday came, was lying at Rosemont ill
unto death, dying as fast as he knew how.
Physicians came from Dublin; my lady was summoned in all speed from
London: but the first said there was “no hope,” and the presence of the
latter failed to save.
For nearly a fortnight my lord lay unconscious of debt, writs, duns,
bailiffs—lay forgetful of his wasted life—of the good he had neglected
to do—of the evil he had not failed to perform.
For a moment—only for a moment—at the very last, the light flickered up
again.
His son noticed the change, and leaned eagerly forward.
“Arthur,” murmured the dying man, thinking of the dead; and that was
all—he was Earl of Glendare no more. His son had succeeded to the title.
Following fast on the heels of the physicians came a Dublin undertaker.
No expense was to be spared about the funeral; such were the new earl’s
orders.
For eight whole days, which seemed to the ordinary Irish mind a period
almost disreputable, the late earl lay sleeping his last sleep in the
home of his ancestors—sleeping so quietly that he might well have
dispensed with the watchers, who never left his side by day or by night.
At length the ninth day arrived, that on which he was to be borne to
Ballyknock Abbey, when, after the lapse of years, the reader is asked
once again to enter Kingslough at high noon.
The town is in mourning; the inhabitants, with a hush of expectation on
them, are waiting to behold the spectacle of the “Th’ Airl” being
carried to his rest.