MATHEW KEARNEY’S ‘STUDY’
Had Mathew Kearney but read the second sheet of his correspondent’s letter,
it is more than likely that Dick had not taken such a gloomy view of his
condition. Mr. McKeown’s epistle continued in this fashion: ‘That ought to
do for him, Mathew, or my name ain’t Tom McKeown. It is not that he is any
worse or better than other young fellows of his own stamp, but he has the
greatest scamp in Christendom for his daily associate. Atlee is deep in
all the mischief that goes on in the National press. I believe he is a
head-centre of the Fenians, and I know he has a correspondence with the
French socialists, and that Rights-of-labour-knot of vagabonds who meet at
Geneva. Your boy is not too wise to keep himself out of these scrapes,
and he is just, by name and station, of consequence enough to make these
fellows make up to and flatter him. Give him a sound fright, then, and when
he is thoroughly alarmed about his failure, send him abroad for a short
tour, let him go study at Halle or Heidelberg--anything, in short, that
will take him away from Ireland, and break off his intimacy with this Atlee
and his companions. While he is with you at Kilgobbin, don’t let him make
acquaintance with those Radical fellows in the county towns. Keep him down,
Mathew, keep him down; and if you find that you cannot do this, make him
believe that you’ll be one day lords of Kilgobbin, and the more he has to
lose the more reluctant he’ll be to risk it. If he’d take to farming, and
marry some decent girl, even a little beneath him in life, it would save
you all uneasiness; but he is just that thing now that brings all the
misery on us in Ireland. He thinks he’s a gentleman because he can do
nothing; and to save himself from the disgrace of incapacity, ‘he’d like to
be a rebel.’
If Mr. Tom McKeown’s reasonings were at times somewhat abstruse and hard of
comprehension to his friend Kearney, it was not that he did not bestow
on them due thought and reflection; and over this private and strictly
confidential page he had now meditated for hours.
‘Bad luck to me,’ cried he at last, ‘if I see what he’s at. If I’m to tell
the boy he is ruined to-day, and to-morrow to announce to him that he is a
lord--if I’m to threaten him now with poverty, and the morning after I’m to
send him to Halle, or Hell, or wherever it is--I’ll soon be out of my mind
myself through bare confusion. As to having him “down,” he’s low enough;
but so shall I be too, if I keep him there. I’m not used to seeing my house
uncomfortable, and I cannot bear it.’
Such were some of his reflections, over his agent’s advice; and it may be
imagined that the Machiavellian Mr. McKeown had fallen upon a very inapt
pupil.
It must be owned that Mathew Kearney was somewhat out of temper with his
son even before the arrival of this letter. While the ‘swells,’ as he would
persist in calling the two English visitors, were there, Dick took no
trouble about them, nor to all seeming made any impression on them. As
Mathew said, ‘He let Joe Atlee make all the running, and, signs on it! Joe
Atlee was taken off to town as Walpole’s companion, and Dick not so much as
thought of. Joe, too, did the honours of the house as if it was his own,
and talked to Lockwood about coming down for the partridge-shooting as if
he was the head of the family. The fellow was a bad lot, and McKeown was
right so far--the less Dick saw of him the better.’
The trouble and distress these reflections, and others like them, cost him
would more than have recompensed Dick, had he been hard-hearted enough to
desire a vengeance. ‘For a quarter of an hour, or maybe twenty minutes,’
said he, ‘I can be as angry as any man in Europe, and, if it was required
of me during that time to do anything desperate--downright wicked--I could
be bound to do it; and what’s more, I’d stand to it afterwards if it cost
me the gallows. But as for keeping up the same mind, as for being able to
say to myself my heart is as hard as ever, I’m just as much bent on cruelty
as I was yesterday--that’s clean beyond me; and the reason, God help me, is
no great comfort to me after all--for it’s just this: that when I do a hard
thing, whether distraining a creature out of his bit of ground, selling a
widow’s pig, or fining a fellow for shooting a hare, I lose my appetite and
have no heart for my meals; and as sure as I go asleep, I dream of all the
misfortunes in life happening to me, and my guardian angel sitting laughing
all the while and saying to me, “Didn’t you bring it on yourself, Mathew
Kearney? couldn’t you bear a little rub without trying to make a calamity
of it? Must somebody be always punished when anything goes wrong in life?
Make up your mind to have six troubles every day of your life, and see how
jolly you’ll be the day you can only count five, or maybe four.”’
As Mr. Kearney sat brooding in this wise, Peter Gill made his entrance into
the study with the formidable monthly lists and accounts, whose examination
constituted a veritable doomsday to the unhappy master.
‘Wouldn’t next Saturday do, Peter?’ asked Kearney, in a tone of almost
entreaty.
‘I’m afther ye since Tuesday last, and I don’t think I’ll be able to go on
much longer.’
Now as Mr. Gill meant by this speech to imply that he was obliged to trust
entirely to his memory for all the details which would have been committed
to writing by others, and to a notched stick for the manifold dates of a
vast variety of events, it was not really a very unfair request he had made
for a peremptory hearing.
‘I vow to the Lord,’ sighed out Kearney, ‘I believe I’m the hardest-worked
man in the three kingdoms.’
‘Maybe you are,’ muttered Gill, though certainly the concurrence scarcely
sounded hearty, while he meanwhile arranged the books.
‘Oh, I know well enough what you mean. If a man doesn’t work with a spade
or follow the plough, you won’t believe that he works at all. He must
drive, or dig, or drain, or mow. There’s no labour but what strains a man’s
back, and makes him weary about the loins; but I’ll tell you, Peter Gill,
that it’s here’--and he touched his forehead with his finger--‘it’s here is
the real workshop. It’s thinking and contriving; setting this against that;
doing one thing that another may happen, and guessing what will come if we
do this and don’t do that; carrying everything in your brain, and, whether
you are sitting over a glass with a friend or taking a nap after dinner,
thinking away all the time! What would you call that, Peter Gill--what
would you call that?’
‘Madness, begorra, or mighty near it!’
‘No; it’s just work--brain-work. As much above mere manual labour as
the intellect, the faculty that raises us above the brutes, is above
the--the--’
‘Yes,’ said Gill, opening the large volume and vaguely passing his hand
over a page. ‘It’s somewhere there about the Conacre!’
‘You’re little better than a beast!’ said Kearney angrily.
‘Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. Let us finish this, now that we’re about
it.’
And so saying, he deposited his other books and papers on the table, and
then drew from his breast-pocket a somewhat thick roll of exceedingly dirty
bank-notes, fastened with a leather thong.
‘I’m glad to see some money at last, Peter,’ cried Kearney, as his eye
caught sight of the notes.
‘Faix, then, it’s little good they’ll do ye,’ muttered the other gruffly.
‘What d’ye mean by that, sir?’ asked he angrily.
‘Just what I said, my lord, the devil a more nor less, and that the money
you see here is no more yours nor it is mine! It belongs to the land it
came from. Ay, ay, stamp away, and go red in the face: you must hear the
truth, whether you like it or no. The place we’re living in is going to
rack and ruin out of sheer bad treatment. There’s not a hedge on the
estate; there isn’t a gate that could be called a gate; the holes the
people live in isn’t good enough for badgers; there’s no water for the
mill at the cross-roads; and the Loch meadows is drowned with wet--we’re
dragging for the hay, like seaweed! And you think you’ve a right to
these’--and he actually shook the notes at him--to go and squander them on
them “impedint” Englishmen that was laughing at you! Didn’t I hear them
myself about the tablecloth that one said was the sail of a boat.’
‘Will you hold your tongue?’ cried Kearney, wild with passion.
‘I will not! I’ll die on the floore but I’ll speak my mind.’
This was not only a favourite phrase of Mr. Gill’s, but it was so far
significant that it always indicated he was about to give notice to
leave--a menace on his part of no unfrequent occurrence.
‘Ye’s going, are ye?’ asked Kearney jeeringly.
‘I just am; and I’m come to give up the books, and to get my receipts and
my charac--ter.’
‘It won’t be hard to give the last, anyway,’ said Kearney, with a grin.
‘So much the better. It will save your honour much writing, with all that
you have to do.’
‘Do you want me to kick you out of the office, Peter Gill?’
‘No, my lord, I’m going quiet and peaceable. I’m only asking my rights.’
‘You’re bidding hard to be kicked out, you are.’
‘Am I to leave them here, or will your honour go over the books with me?’
‘Leave the notes, sir, and go to the devil.’
‘I will, my lord; and one comfort at least I’ll have--it won’t be harder to
put up with his temper.’
Mr. Gill’s head barely escaped the heavy account-book which struck the door
above him as he escaped from the room, and Mathew Kearney sat back in his
chair and grasped the arms of it like one threatened with a fit.
‘Where’s Miss Kitty--where’s my daughter?’ cried he aloud, as though there
was some one within hearing. ‘Taking the dogs a walk, I’ll be bound,’
muttered he, ‘or gone to see somebody’s child with the measles, devil fear
her! She has plenty on her hands to do anywhere but at home. The place
might be going to rack and ruin for her if there was only a young colt to
look at, or a new litter of pigs! And so you think to frighten me, Peter
Gill! You’ve been doing the same thing every Easter, and every harvest,
these five-and-twenty years! I can only say I wish you had kept your threat
long ago, and the property wouldn’t have as many tumble-down cabins and
ruined fences as it has now, and my rent-roll, too, wouldn’t have been the
worse. I don’t believe there’s a man in Ireland more cruelly robbed than
myself. There isn’t an estate in the county has not risen in value except
my own! There’s not a landed gentleman hasn’t laid by money in the barony
but myself, and if you were to believe the newspapers, I’m the hardest
landlord in the province of Leinster. Is that Mickey Doolan there? Mickey!’
cried he, opening the window, ‘did you see Miss Kearney anywhere about?’
‘Yes, my lord. I see her coming up the Bog road with Miss O’Shea.’
‘The worse luck mine!’ muttered he, as he closed the window, and leaned his
head on his hand.