Produced by Distributed Proofreaders.
[Illustration: She suffered her hand to remain]
LORD KILGOBBIN
by
Charles Lever
TO THE MEMORY OF ONE
WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP MADE THE HAPPINESS OF A LONG LIFE,
AND WHOSE LOSS HAS LEFT ME HELPLESS,
I DEDICATE THIS WORK,
WRITTEN IN BREAKING HEALTH AND BROKEN SPIRITS.
THE TASK, THAT ONCE WAS MY JOY AND MY PRIDE,
I HAVE LIVED TO FIND ASSOCIATED WITH MY SORROW:
IT IS NOT, THEN, WITHOUT A CAUSE I SAY,
I HOPE THIS EFFORT MAY BE MY LAST.
CHARLES LEVER.
TRIESTE, _January 20, 1872_.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
‘Lord Kilgobbin’ appeared originally as a serial, (illustrated by Luke
Fildes) in ‘The Cornhill Magazine,’ commencing in the issue for October
1870, and ending in the issue for March 1872. It was first published in
book form in three volumes in 1872, with the following title-page:
LORD KILGOBBIN | A TALE OF IRELAND IN OUR OWN TIME | BY | CHARLES LEVER,
LL.D. | AUTHOR OF | ‘THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP’S FOLLY,’ ‘THAT BOY OF
NORCOTT’S,’ | ETC., ETC. | IN THREE VOLUMES | [VOL. I.] | LONDON | SMITH,
ELDER, AND CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE | 1872. | [THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS
RESERVED.]
CONTENTS
CHAP. I. KILGOBBIN CASTLE
II. THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI
III. THE CHUMS
IV. AT ‘TRINITY’
V. HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE
VI. THE ‘BLUE COAT’
VII. THE COUSINS
VIII. SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER
IX. A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG
X. THE SEARCH FOR ARMS
XI. WHAT THE PAPERS SAID OF IT
XII. THE JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY
XIII. A SICK-ROOM
XIV. AT DINNER
XV. IN THE GARDEN AT DUSK
XVI. THE TWO ‘KEARNEYS’
XVII. DICK’S REVERIE
XVIII. MATHEW KEARNEY’S ‘STUDY’
XIX. AN UNWELCOME VISIT
XX. A DOMESTIC DISCUSSION
XXI. A SMALL DINNER-PARTY
XXII. A CONFIDENTIAL TALK
XXIII. A HAPHAZARD VICEROY
XXIV. TWO FRIENDS AT BREAKFAST
XXV. ATLEE’S EMBARRASSMENTS
XXVI. DICK KEARNEY’S CHAMBERS
XXVII. A CRAFTY COUNSELLOR
XXVIII. ‘ON THE LEADS’
XXIX. ON A VISIT AT KILGOBBIN
XXX. THE MOATE STATION
XXXI. HOW THE ‘GOATS’ REVOLTED
XXXII. AN UNLOOKED-FOR PLEASURE
XXXIII. PLMNUDDM CASTLE, NORTH WALES
XXXIV. AT TEA-TIME
XXXV. A DRIVE AT SUNRISE
XXXVI. THE EXCURSION
XXXVII. THE RETURN
XXXVIII. O’SHEA’S BARN
XXXIX. AN EARLY GALLOP
XL. OLD MEMORIES
XLI. TWO FAMILIAR EPISTLES
XLII. AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM
XLIII. SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS
XLIV. THE HEAD CONSTABLE
XLV. SOME IRISHRIES
XLVI. SAGE ADVICE
XLVII. REPROOF
XLVIII. HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE
XLIX. A CUP OF TEA
L. CROSS-PURPOSES
LI. AWAKENINGS
LII. A CHANCE AGREEMENT
LIII. A SCRAPE
LIV. HOW IT BEFELL
LV. TWO J.P.’S
LVI. BEFORE THE DOOR
LVII. A DOCTOR
LVIII. IN TURKEY
LIX. A LETTER-BAG
LX. A DEFEAT
LXI. A CHANGE OF FRONT
LXII. WITH A PASHA
LXIII. ATLEE ON HIS TRAVELS
LXIV. GREEK MEETS GREEK
LXV. IN TOWN
LXVI. ATLEB’S MESSAGE
LXVII. WALPOLE ALONE
LXVIII. THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE
LXIX. AT KILGOBBIN CASTLE
LXX. ATLEE’S RETURN
LXXI. THE DRIVE
LXXII. THE SAUNTER IN TOWN
LXXIII. A DARKENED ROOM
LXXIV. AN ANGRY COLLOQUY
LXXV. MATHEW KEARNEY’S REFLECTIONS
LXXVI. VERY CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION
LXXVII. TWO YOUNG LADIES ON MATRIMONY
LXXVIII. A MISERABLE MORNING
LXXIX. PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS
LXXX. A NEW ARRIVAL
LXXXI. AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT
LXXXII. THE BREAKFAST-ROOM
LXXXIII. THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT
LXXXIV. NEXT MORNING
LXXXV. THE END
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SHE SUFFERED HER HAND TO REMAIN
‘WHAT LARK HAVE YOU BEEN ON, MASTER JOE?’
‘ONE MORE SITTING I MUST HAVE, SIR, FOR THE HAIR’
‘HOW THAT SONG MAKES ME WISH WE WERE BACK AGAIN WHERE I HEARD IT FIRST’
HE ENTERED, AND NINA AROSE AS HE CAME FORWARD
‘YOU ARE RIGHT, I SEE IT ALL,’ AND NOW HE SEIZED HER HAND AND KISSED IT
KATE, STILL DRESSED, HAD THROWN HERSELF ON THE BED, AND WAS SOUND ASLEEP
‘IS NOT THAT AS FINE AS YOUR BOASTED CAMPAGNA?’
‘YOU WEAR A RING OF GREAT BEAUTY--MAY I LOOK AT IT?’
‘TRUE, THERE IS NO TENDER LIGHT THERE,’ MUTTERED HE, GAZING AT HER EYES
HE KNELT DOWN ON ONE KNEE BEFORE HER
NINA CAME FORWARD AT THAT MOMENT
NINA KOSTALERGI WAS BUSILY ENGAGED IN PINNING UP THE SKIRT OF HER DRESS
THE BALCONY CREAKED AND TREMBLED, AND AT LAST GAVE WAY
‘JUST LOOK AT THE CROWD THAT IS WATCHING US ALREADY’
‘I SHOULD LIKE TO HAVE BACK MY LETTERS’
WALPOLE LOOKED KEENLY AT THE OTHER’S FACE AS HE READ THE PAPER
‘I DECLARE YOU HAVE LEFT A TEAR UPON MY CHEEK,’ SAID KATE
CHAPTER I
KILGOBBIN CASTLE
Some one has said that almost all that Ireland possesses of picturesque
beauty is to be found on, or in the immediate neighbourhood of, the
seaboard; and if we except some brief patches of river scenery on the Nore
and the Blackwater, and a part of Lough Erne, the assertion is not devoid
of truth. The dreary expanse called the Bog of Allen, which occupies a
tableland in the centre of the island, stretches away for miles--flat,
sad-coloured, and monotonous, fissured in every direction by channels of
dark-tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad colour. This
tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, at distant
intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud-hovel, undistinguishable from
the hillocks of turf around it.
Fringing this broad waste, little patches of cultivation are to be seen:
small potato-gardens, as they are called, or a few roods of oats, green
even in the late autumn; but, strangely enough, with nothing to show
where the humble tiller of the soil is living, nor, often, any visible
road to these isolated spots of culture. Gradually, however--but very
gradually--the prospect brightens. Fields with inclosures, and a cabin or
two, are to be met with; a solitary tree, generally an ash, will be seen;
some rude instrument of husbandry, or an ass-cart, will show that we are
emerging from the region of complete destitution and approaching a land of
at least struggling civilisation. At last, and by a transition that is not
always easy to mark, the scene glides into those rich pasture-lands and
well-tilled farms that form the wealth of the midland counties. Gentlemen’s
seats and waving plantations succeed, and we are in a country of comfort
and abundance.
On this border-land between fertility and destitution, and on a tract which
had probably once been part of the Bog itself, there stood--there stands
still--a short, square tower, battlemented at top, and surmounted with a
pointed roof, which seems to grow out of a cluster of farm-buildings, so
surrounded is its base by roofs of thatch and slates. Incongruous, vulgar,
and ugly in every way, the old keep appears to look down on them--time-worn
and battered as it is--as might a reduced gentleman regard the unworthy
associates with which an altered fortune had linked him. This is all that
remains of Kilgobbin Castle.
In the guidebooks we read that it was once a place of strength and
importance, and that Hugh de Lacy--the same bold knight ‘who had won all
Ireland for the English from the Shannon to the sea’--had taken this
castle from a native chieftain called Neal O’Caharney, whose family he had
slain, all save one; and then it adds: ‘Sir Hugh came one day, with three
Englishmen, that he might show them the castle, when there came to him a
youth of the men of Meath--a certain Gilla Naher O’Mahey, foster-brother
of O’Caharney himself--with his battle-axe concealed beneath his cloak,
and while De Lacy was reading the petition he gave him, he dealt him such
a blow that his head flew off many yards away, both head and body being
afterwards buried in the ditch of the castle.’
The annals of Kilronan further relate that the O’Caharneys became adherents
of the English--dropping their Irish designation, and calling themselves
Kearney; and in this way were restored to a part of the lands and the
castle of Kilgobbin--‘by favour of which act of grace,’ says the chronicle,
‘they were bound to raise a becoming monument over the brave knight, Hugh
de Lacy, whom their kinsman had so treacherously slain; but they did no
more of this than one large stone of granite, and no inscription thereon:
thus showing that at all times, and with all men, the O’Caharneys were
false knaves and untrue to their word.’
In later times, again, the Kearneys returned to the old faith of their
fathers and followed the fortunes of King James; one of them, Michael
O’Kearney, having acted as aide-de-camp at the ‘Boyne,’ and conducted the
king to Kilgobbin, where he passed the night after the defeat, and, as the
tradition records, held a court the next morning, at which he thanked the
owner of the castle for his hospitality, and created him on the spot a
viscount by the style and title of Lord Kilgobbin.
It is needless to say that the newly-created noble saw good reason to keep
his elevation to himself. They were somewhat critical times just then for
the adherents of the lost cause, and the followers of King William were
keen at scenting out any disloyalty that might be turned to good account
by a confiscation. The Kearneys, however, were prudent. They entertained
a Dutch officer, Van Straaten, on King William’s staff, and gave such
valuable information besides as to the condition of the country, that no
suspicions of disloyalty attached to them.
To these succeeded more peaceful times, during which the Kearneys were
more engaged in endeavouring to reconstruct the fallen condition of their
fortunes than in political intrigue. Indeed, a very small portion of the
original estate now remained to them, and of what once had produced above
four thousand a year, there was left a property barely worth eight hundred.
The present owner, with whose fortunes we are more Immediately concerned,
was a widower. Mathew Kearney’s family consisted of a son and a daughter:
the former about two-and-twenty, the latter four years younger, though to
all appearance there did not seem a year between them.
Mathew Kearney himself was a man of about fifty-four or fifty-six; hale,
handsome, and powerful; his snow-white hair and bright complexion, with his
full grey eyes and regular teeth giving him an air of genial cordiality at
first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as
the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and
even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout
heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a
considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it
was exhausted, continued to live on at the same rate as before, till at
last, as creditors grew pressing, and mortgages threatened foreclosure, he
saw himself reduced to something less than one-fifth of his former outlay;
and though he seemed to address himself to the task with a bold spirit and
a resolute mind, the old habits were too deeply rooted to be eradicated,
and the pleasant companionship of his equals, his life at the club in
Dublin, his joyous conviviality, no longer possible, he suffered himself
to descend to an inferior rank, and sought his associates amongst humbler
men, whose flattering reception of him soon reconciled him to his fallen
condition. His companions were now the small farmers of the neighbourhood
and the shopkeepers in the adjoining town of Moate, to whose habits and
modes of thought and expression he gradually conformed, till it became
positively irksome to himself to keep the company of his equals. Whether,
however, it was that age had breached the stronghold of his good spirits,
or that conscience rebuked him for having derogated from his station,
certain it is that all his buoyancy failed him when away from society,
and that in the quietness of his home he was depressed and dispirited to
a degree; and to that genial temper, which once he could count on against
every reverse that befell him, there now succeeded an irritable, peevish
spirit, that led him to attribute every annoyance he met with to some fault
or shortcoming of others.
By his neighbours in the town and by his tenantry he was always addressed
as ‘My lord,’ and treated with all the deference that pertained to such
difference of station. By the gentry, however, when at rare occasions he
met them, he was known as Mr. Kearney; and in the village post-office, the
letters with the name Mathew Kearney, Esq., were perpetual reminders of
what rank was accorded him by that wider section of the world that lived
beyond the shadow of Kilgobbin Castle.
Perhaps the impossible task of serving two masters is never more palpably
displayed than when the attempt attaches to a divided identity--when a man
tries to be himself in two distinct parts in life, without the slightest
misgiving of hypocrisy while doing so. Mathew Kearney not only did not
assume any pretension to nobility amongst his equals, but he would have
felt that any reference to his title from one of them would have been an
impertinence, and an impertinence to be resented; while, at the same time,
had a shopkeeper of Moate, or one of the tenants, addressed him as other
than ‘My lord,’ he would not have deigned him a notice.
Strangely enough, this divided allegiance did not merely prevail with the
outer world, it actually penetrated within his walls. By his son, Richard
Kearney, he was always called ‘My lord’; while Kate as persistently
addressed and spoke of him as papa. Nor was this difference without
signification as to their separate natures and tempers.
Had Mathew Kearney contrived to divide the two parts of his nature, and
bequeathed all his pride, his vanity, and his pretensions to his son,
while he gave his light-heartedness, his buoyancy, and kindliness to his
daughter, the partition could not have been more perfect. Richard Kearney
was full of an insolent pride of birth. Contrasting the position of his
father with that held by his grandfather, he resented the downfall as
the act of a dominant faction, eager to outrage the old race and the old
religion of Ireland. Kate took a very different view of their condition.
She clung, indeed, to the notion of their good blood; but as a thing
that might assuage many of the pangs of adverse fortune, not increase or
embitter them; and ‘if we are ever to emerge,’ thought she, ‘from this
poor state, we shall meet our class without any of the shame of a mushroom
origin. It will be a restoration, and not a new elevation.’ She was a fine,
handsome, fearless girl, whom many said ought to have been a boy; but this
was rather intended as a covert slight on the narrower nature and peevish
temperament of her brother--another way, indeed, of saying that they should
have exchanged conditions.
The listless indolence of her father’s life, and the almost complete
absence from home of her brother, who was pursuing his studies at the
Dublin University, had given over to her charge not only the household, but
no small share of the management of the estate--all, in fact, that an old
land-steward, a certain Peter Gill, would permit her to exercise; for Peter
was a very absolute and despotic Grand-Vizier, and if it had not been that
he could neither read nor write, it would have been utterly impossible to
have wrested from him a particle of power over the property. This happy
defect in his education--happy so far as Kate’s rule was concerned--gave
her the one claim she could prefer to any superiority over him, and his
obstinacy could never be effectually overcome, except by confronting him
with a written document or a column of figures. Before these, indeed, he
would stand crestfallen and abashed. Some strange terror seemed to possess
him as to the peril of opposing himself to such inscrutable testimony--a
fear, be it said, he never felt in contesting an oral witness.
Peter had one resource, however, and I am not sure that a similar
stronghold has not secured the power of greater men and in higher
functions. Peter’s sway was of so varied and complicated a kind; the duties
he discharged were so various, manifold, and conflicting; the measures
he took with the people, whose destinies were committed to him, were
so thoroughly devised, by reference to the peculiar condition of each
man--what he could do, or bear, or submit to--and not by any sense of
justice; that a sort of government grew up over the property full of
hitches, contingencies, and compensations, of which none but the inventor
of the machinery could possibly pretend to the direction. The estate being,
to use his own words, ‘so like the old coach-harness, so full of knots,
splices, and entanglements, there was not another man in Ireland could make
it work, and if another were to try it, it would all come to pieces in his
hands.’
Kate was shrewd enough to see this; and in the same way that she had
admiringly watched Peter as he knotted a trace here and supplemented a
strap there, strengthening a weak point, and providing for casualties even
the least likely, she saw him dealing with the tenantry on the property;
and in the same spirit that he made allowance for sickness here and
misfortune there, he would be as prompt to screw up a lagging tenant to
the last penny, and secure the landlord in the share of any season of
prosperity.
Had the Government Commissioner, sent to report on the state of
land-tenure in Ireland, confined himself to a visit to the estate of Lord
Kilgobbin--for so we like to call him--it is just possible that the Cabinet
would have found the task of legislation even more difficult than they have
already admitted it to be.
First of all, not a tenant on the estate had any certain knowledge of how
much land he held. There had been no survey of the property for years. ‘It
will be made up to you,’ was Gill’s phrase about everything. ‘What matters
if you have an acre more or an acre less?’ Neither had any one a lease,
nor, indeed, a writing of any kind. Gill settled that on the 25th March and
25th September a certain sum was to be forthcoming, and that was all. When
‘the lord’ wanted them, they were always to give him a hand, which often
meant with their carts and horses, especially in harvest-time. Not that
they were a hard-worked or hard-working population: they took life very
easy, seeing that by no possible exertion could they materially better
themselves; and even when they hunted a neighbour’s cow out of their wheat,
they would execute the eviction with a lazy indolence and sluggishness that
took away from the act all semblance of ungenerousness.
They were very poor, their hovels were wretched, their clothes ragged, and
their food scanty; but, with all that, they were not discontented, and very
far from unhappy. There was no prosperity at hand to contrast with their
poverty. The world was, on the whole, pretty much as they always remembered
it. They would have liked to be ‘better off’ if they knew how, but they did
not know if there were a ‘better off,’ much less how to come at it; and if
there were, Peter Gill certainly did not tell them of it.
If a stray visitor to fair or market brought back the news that there was
an agitation abroad for a new settlement of the land, that popular orators
were proclaiming the poor man’s rights and denouncing the cruelties of
the landlord, if they heard that men were talking of repealing the laws
which secured property to the owner, and only admitted him to a sort of
partnership with the tiller of the soil, old Gill speedily assured them
that these were changes only to be adopted in Ulster, where the tenants
were rack-rented and treated like slaves. ‘Which of you here,’ would he
say, ‘can come forward and say he was ever evicted?’ Now as the term was
one of which none had the very vaguest conception--it might, for aught they
knew, have been an operation in surgery--the appeal was an overwhelming
success. ‘Sorra doubt of it, but ould Peter’s right, and there’s worse
places to live in, and worse landlords to live under, than the lord.’
Not but it taxed Gill’s skill and cleverness to maintain this quarantine
against the outer world; and he often felt like Prince Metternich in a like
strait--that it would only be a question of time, and, in the long run, the
newspaper fellows must win.
From what has been said, therefore, it may be imagined that Kilgobbin was
not a model estate, nor Peter Gill exactly the sort of witness from which
a select committee would have extracted any valuable suggestions for the
construction of a land-code.
Anything short of Kate Kearney’s fine temper and genial disposition would
have broken down by daily dealing with this cross-grained, wrong-headed,
and obstinate old fellow, whose ideas of management all centred in craft
and subtlety--outwitting this man, forestalling that--doing everything by
halves, so that no boon came unassociated with some contingency or other by
which he secured to himself unlimited power and uncontrolled tyranny.
As Gill was in perfect possession of her father’s confidence, to oppose him
in anything was a task of no mean difficulty; and the mere thought that the
old fellow should feel offended and throw up his charge--a threat he had
more than once half hinted--was a terror Kilgobbin could not have faced.
Nor was this her only care. There was Dick continually dunning her for
remittances, and importuning her for means to supply his extravagances. ‘I
suspected how it would be,’ wrote he once, ‘with a lady paymaster. And when
my father told me I was to look to you for my allowance, I accepted the
information as a heavy percentage taken off my beggarly income. What could
you--what could any young girl--know of the requirements of a man going out
into the best society of a capital? To derive any benefit from associating
with these people, I must at least seem to live like them. I am received as
the son of a man of condition and property, and you want to bound my habits
by those of my chum, Joe Atlee, whose father is starving somewhere on the
pay of a Presbyterian minister. Even Joe himself laughs at the notion of
gauging my expenses by his.
‘If this is to go on--I mean if you intend to persist in this plan--be
frank enough to say so at once, and I will either take pupils, or seek a
clerkship, or go off to Australia; and I care precious little which of the
three.
‘I know what a proud thing it is for whoever manages the revenue to come
forward and show a surplus. Chancellors of the Exchequer make great
reputations in that fashion; but there are certain economies that lie close
to revolutions; now don’t risk this, nor don’t be above taking a hint from
one some years older than you, though he neither rules his father’s house
nor metes out his pocket-money.’
Such, and such like, were the epistles she received from time to time, and
though frequency blunted something of their sting, and their injustice gave
her a support against their sarcasm, she read and thought over them in a
spirit of bitter mortification. Of course she showed none of these letters
to her father. He, indeed, only asked if Dick were well, or if he were soon
going up for that scholarship or fellowship--he did not know which, nor
was he to blame--‘which, after all, it was hard on a Kearney to stoop to
accept, only that times were changed with us! and we weren’t what we used
to be’--a reflection so overwhelming that he generally felt unable to dwell
on it.