AN EARLY GALLOP
Mathew Kearney had risen early, an unusual thing with him of late; but he
had some intention of showing his guest Mr. Walpole over the farm after
breakfast, and was anxious to give some preliminary orders to have
everything ‘ship-shape’ for the inspection.
To make a very disorderly and much-neglected Irish farm assume an air of
discipline, regularity, and neatness at a moment’s notice, was pretty much
such an exploit as it would have been to muster an Indian tribe, and pass
them before some Prussian martinet as a regiment of guards.
To make the ill-fenced and misshapen fields seem trim paddocks, wavering
and serpentining furrows appear straight and regular lines of tillage,
weed-grown fields look marvels of cleanliness and care, while the lounging
and ragged population were to be passed off as a thriving and industrious
peasantry, well paid and contented, were difficulties that Mr. Kearney did
not propose to confront. Indeed, to do him justice, he thought there was
a good deal of pedantic and ‘model-farming’ humbug about all that English
passion for neatness he had read of in public journals, and as our
fathers--better gentlemen, as he called them, and more hospitable fellows
than any of us--had got on without steam-mowing and threshing, and
bone-crushing, he thought we might farm our properties without being either
blacksmiths or stokers.
‘God help us,’ he would say, ‘I suppose we’ll be chewing our food by steam
one of these days, and filling our stomachs by hydraulic pressure. But for
my own part, I like something to work for me that I can swear at when it
goes wrong. There’s little use in cursing a cylinder.’
To have heard him amongst his labourers that morning, it was plain to see
that they were not in the category of machinery. On one pretext or another,
however, they had slunk away one by one, so that at last he found himself
storming alone in a stubble-field, with no other companion than one of
Kate’s terriers. The sharp barking of this dog aroused him in the midst of
his imprecations, and looking over the dry-stone wall that inclosed the
field, he saw a horseman coming along at a sharp canter, and taking the
fences as they came like a man in a hunting-field. He rode well, and was
mounted upon a strong wiry hackney--a cross-bred horse, and of little money
value, but one of those active cats of horseflesh that a knowing hand can
appreciate. Now, little as Kearney liked the liberty of a man riding over
his ditches and his turnips when out of hunting season, his old love of
good horsemanship made him watch the rider with interest and even pleasure.
‘May I never!’ muttered he to himself, ‘if he’s not coming at this wall.’
And as the inclosure in question was built of large jagged stones, without
mortar, and fully four feet in height, the upper course being formed of a
sort of coping in which the stones stood edgewise, the attempt did look
somewhat rash. Not taking the wall where it was slightly breached, and
where some loose stones had fallen, the rider rode boldly at one of the
highest portions, but where the ground was good on either side.
‘He knows what he’s at!’ muttered Kearney, as the horse came bounding over
and alighted in perfect safety in the field.
‘Well done! whoever you are,’ cried Kearney, delighted, as the rider
removed his hat and turned round to salute him.
‘And don’t you know me, sir?’ asked he.
‘’Faith, I do not,’ replied Kearney; ‘but somehow I think I know the
chestnut. To be sure I do. There’s the old mark on her knee, how ever she
found the man who could throw her down. Isn’t she Miss O’Shea’s Kattoo?’
‘That she is, sir, and I’m her nephew.’
‘Are you?’ said Kearney dryly.
The young fellow was so terribly pulled up by the unexpected repulse--more
marked even by the look than the words of the other--that he sat unable
to utter a syllable. ‘I had hoped, sir,’ said he at last, ‘that I had not
outgrown your recollection, as I can promise none of your former kindness
to me has outgrown mine.’
‘But it took you three weeks to recall it, all the same,’ said Kearney.
‘It is true, sir, I am very nearly so long here; but my aunt, whose guest I
am, told me I must be called on first; that--I’m sure I can’t say for whose
benefit it was supposed to be--I should not make the first visit; in fact,
there was some rule about the matter, and that I must not contravene it.
And although I yielded with a very bad grace, I was in a measure under
orders, and dared not resist.’
‘She told you, of course, that we were not on our old terms: that there
was a coldness between the families, and we had seen nothing of each other
lately?’
‘Not a word of it, sir.’
‘Nor of any reason why you should not come here as of old?’
‘None, on my honour; beyond this piece of stupid etiquette, I never heard
of anything like a reason.’
‘I am all the better pleased with my old neighbour,’ said Kearney, in his
more genial tone. ‘Not, indeed, that I ought ever to have distrusted her,
but for all that--Well, never mind,’ muttered he, as though debating the
question with himself, and unable to decide it, ‘you are here now--eh! You
are here now.’
‘You almost make me suspect, sir, that I ought not to be here now.’
‘At all events, if you were waiting for me you wouldn’t be here. Is not
that true, young gentleman?’
‘Quite true, sir, but not impossible to explain.’ And he now flung himself
to the ground, and with the rein over his arm, came up to Kearney’s side.
‘I suppose, but for an accident, I should have gone on waiting for that
visit you had no intention to make me, and canvassing with myself how long
you were taking to make up your mind to call on me, when I heard only last
night that some noted rebel--I’ll remember his name in a minute or two--was
seen in the neighbourhood, and that the police were on his track with a
warrant, and even intended to search for him here.’
‘In my house--in Kilgobbin Castle?’
‘Yes, here in your house, where, from a sure information, he had been
harboured for some days. This fellow--a head-centre, or leader, with a
large sum on his head--has, they say, got away; but the hope of finding
some papers, some clue to him here, will certainly lead them to search the
castle, and I thought I’d come over and apprise you of it at all events,
lest the surprise should prove too much for your temper.’
‘Do they forget I’m in the commission of the peace?’ said Kearney, in a
voice trembling with passion.
‘You know far better than me how far party spirit tempers life in this
country, and are better able to say whether some private intention to
insult is couched under this attempt.’
‘That’s true,’ cried the old man, ever ready to regard himself as the
object of some secret malevolence. ‘You cannot remember this rebel’s name,
can you?’
‘It was Daniel something--that’s all I know.’
A long, fine whistle was Kearney’s rejoinder, and after a second or two he
said, ‘I can trust you, Gorman; and I may tell you they may be not so great
fools as I took them for. Not that I was harbouring the fellow, mind you;
but there came a college friend of Dick’s here a few days back--a clever
fellow he was, and knew Ireland well--and we called him Mr. Daniel, and it
was but yesterday he left us and did not return. I have a notion now he was
the head-centre they’re looking for.’
‘Do you know if he has left any baggage or papers behind him?’
‘I know nothing about this whatever, nor do I know how far Dick was in his
secret.’
‘You will be cool and collected, I am sure, sir, when they come here with
the search-warrant. You’ll not give them even the passing triumph of seeing
that you are annoyed or offended?’
‘That I will, my lad. I’m prepared now, and I’ll take them as easy as if
it was a morning call. Come in and have your breakfast with us, and say
nothing about what we’ve been talking over.’
‘Many thanks, sir, but I think--indeed I feel sure--I ought to go back at
once. I have come here without my aunt’s knowledge, and now that I have
seen you and put you on your guard, I ought to go back as fast as I can.’
‘So you shall, when you feed your beast and take something yourself. Poor
old Kattoo isn’t used to this sort of cross-country work, and she’s panting
there badly enough. That mare is twenty-one years of age.’
‘She’s fresh on her legs--not a curb nor a spavin, nor even a wind-gall
about her,’ said the young man.
‘And the reward for it all is to be ridden like a steeplechaser!’ sighed
old Kearney. ‘Isn’t that the world over? Break down early, and you are a
good-for-nothing. Carry on your spirit, and your pluck, and your endurance
to a green old age, and maybe they won’t take it out of you!--always
contrasting you, however, with yourself long ago, and telling the
bystanders what a rare beast you were in your good days. Do you think they
had dared to pass this insult upon _me_ when I was five-and-twenty or
thirty? Do you think there’s a man in the county would have come on this
errand to search Kilgobbin when I was a young man, Mr. O’Shea?’
‘I think you can afford to treat it with the contempt you have determined
to show it.’
‘That’s all very fine now,’ said Kearney; ‘but there was a time I’d rather
have chucked the chief constable out of the window and sent the sergeant
after him.’
‘I don’t know whether that would have been better,’ said Gorman, with a
faint smile.
‘Neither do I; but I know that I myself would have felt better and easier
in my mind after it. I’d have eaten my breakfast with a good appetite, and
gone about my day’s work, whatever it was, with a free heart and fearless
in my conscience! Ay, ay,’ muttered he to himself, ‘poor old Ireland isn’t
what it used to be!’
‘I’m very sorry, sir, but though I’d like immensely to go back with you,
don’t you think I ought to return home?’
‘I don’t think anything of the sort. Your aunt and I had a tiff the last
time we met, and that was some months ago. We’re both of us old and
cross-grained enough to keep up the grudge for the rest of our lives. Let
us, then, make the most of the accident that has led you here, and when
you go home, you shall be the bearer of the most submissive message I can
invent to my old friend, and there shall be no terms too humble for me to
ask her pardon.’
‘That’s enough, sir. I’ll breakfast here.’
‘Of course you’ll say nothing of what brought you over here. But I ought
to warn you not to drop anything carelessly about politics in the county
generally, for we have a young relative and a private secretary of the
Lord-Lieutenant’s visiting us, and it’s as well to be cautious before him.’
The old man mentioned this circumstance in the cursory tone of an ordinary
remark, but he could not conceal the pride he felt in the rank and
condition of his guest. As for Gorman, perhaps it was his foreign breeding,
perhaps his ignorance of all home matters generally, but he simply assented
to the force of the caution, and paid no other attention to the incident.
‘His name is Walpole, and he is related to half the peerage,’ said the old
man, with some irritation of manner.
A mere nod acknowledged the information, and he went on--
‘This was the young fellow who was with Kitty on the night they attacked
the castle, and he got both bones of his forearm smashed with a shot.’
‘An ugly wound,’ was the only rejoinder.
‘So it was, and for a while they thought he’d lose the arm. Kitty says he
behaved beautifully, cool and steady all through.’
Another nod, but this time Gorman’s lips were firmly compressed.
‘There’s no denying it,’ said the old man, with a touch of sadness in his
voice--‘there’s no denying it, the English have courage; though,’ added he
afterwards, ‘it’s in a cold, sluggish way of their own, which we don’t like
here. There he is, now, that young fellow that has just parted from the two
girls. The tall one is my niece--I must present you to her.’