HOW IT BEFELL
While Lord Kilgobbin and his son are plodding along towards Moate with a
horse not long released from the harrow, and over a road which the late
rains had sorely damaged, the moment is not inopportune to explain the
nature of the incident, small enough in its way, that called on them for
this journey at nightfall. It befell that when Miss Betty, indignant at
her nephew’s defection, and outraged that he should descend to call at
Kilgobbin, determined to cast him off for ever, she also resolved upon a
project over which she had long meditated, and to which the conversation at
her late dinner greatly predisposed her.
The growing unfertility of the land, the sturdy rejection of the authority
of the Church, manifested in so many ways by the people, had led Miss
O’Shea to speculate more on the insecurity of landed property in Ireland
than all the long list of outrages scheduled at assizes, or all the burning
haggards that ever flared in a wintry sky. Her notion was to retire into
some religious sisterhood, and away from life and its cares, to pass her
remaining years in holy meditation and piety. She would have liked to have
sold her estate and endowed some house or convent with the proceeds, but
there were certain legal difficulties that stood in the way, and her
law-agent, McKeown, must be seen and conferred with about these.
Her moods of passion were usually so very violent that she would stop at
nothing; and in the torrent of her anger she would decide on a course of
action which would colour a whole lifetime. On the present occasion her
first step was to write and acquaint McKeown that she would be at Moodie’s
Hotel, Dominick Street, the same evening, and begged he might call there at
eight or nine o’clock, as her business with him was pressing. Her next care
was to let the house and lands of O’Shea’s Barn to Peter Gill, for the term
of one year, at a rent scarcely more than nominal, the said Gill binding
himself to maintain the gardens, the shrubberies, and all the ornamental
plantings in their accustomed order and condition. In fact, the extreme
moderation of the rent was to be recompensed by the large space allotted
to unprofitable land, and the great care he was pledged to exercise in
its preservation; and while nominally the tenant, so manifold were the
obligations imposed on him, he was in reality very little other than
the caretaker of O’Shea’s Barn and its dependencies. No fences were
to be altered, or boundaries changed. All the copses of young timber
were to be carefully protected by palings as heretofore, and even the
ornamental cattle--the shorthorns, and the Alderneys, and a few favourite
‘Kerries,’--were to be kept on the allotted paddocks; and to old Kattoo
herself was allotted a loose box, with a small field attached to it, where
she might saunter at will, and ruminate over the less happy quadrupeds that
had to work for their subsistence.
Now, though Miss Betty, in the full torrent of her anger, had that much of
method in her madness to remember the various details, whose interests were
the business of her daily life, and so far made provision for the future of
her pet cows and horses and dogs and guinea-fowls, so that if she should
ever resolve to return she should find all as she had left it, the short
paper of agreement by which she accepted Gill as her tenant was drawn up by
her own hand, unaided by a lawyer; and, whether from the intemperate haste
of the moment, or an unbounded confidence in Gill’s honesty and fidelity,
was not only carelessly expressed, but worded in a way that implied how her
trustfulness exonerated her from anything beyond the expression of what she
wished for, and what she believed her tenant would strictly perform. Gill’s
repeated phrase of ‘Whatever her honour’s ladyship liked’ had followed
every sentence as she read the document aloud to him; and the only real
puzzle she had was to explain to the poor man’s simple comprehension that
she was not making a hard bargain with him, but treating him handsomely and
in all confidence.
Shrewd and sharp as the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people,
and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking
the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see
what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was
thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble
man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave ‘that
her honour knew what was best. God reward and keep her long in the way to
do it!’--with all this, Miss O’Shea had not accomplished the first stage
of her journey to Dublin, when Peter Gill was seated in the office of Pat
McEvoy, the attorney at Moate--smart practitioner, who had done more to
foster litigation between tenant and landlord than all the ‘grievances’
that ever were placarded by the press.
‘When did you get this, Peter?’ said the attorney, as he looked about,
unable to find a date.
‘This morning, sir, just before she started.’
‘You’ll have to come before the magistrate and make an oath of the date,
and, by my conscience, it’s worth the trouble.’
‘Why, sir, what’s in it?’ cried Peter eagerly.
‘I’m no lawyer if she hasn’t given you a clear possession of the place,
subject to certain trusts, and even for the non-performance of these there
is no penalty attached. When Councillor Holmes comes down at the assizes,
I’ll lay a case before him, and I’ll wager a trifle, Peter, you will turn
out to be an estated gentleman.’
‘Blood alive!’ was all Peter could utter.
Though the conversation that ensued occupied more than an hour, it is not
necessary that we should repeat what occurred, nor state more than the fact
that Peter went home fully assured that if O’Shea’s Barn was not his own
indisputably, it would be very hard to dispossess him, and that, at all
events, the occupation was secure to him for the present. The importance
that the law always attaches to possession Mr. McEvoy took care to impress
on Gill’s mind, and he fully convinced him that a forcible seizure of the
premises was far more to be apprehended than the slower process of a suit
and a verdict.
It was about the third week after this opinion had been given, when young
O’Shea walked over from Kilgobbin Castle to the Barn, intending to see his
aunt and take his farewell of her.
Though he had steeled his heart against the emotion such a leave-taking was
likely to evoke, he was in nowise prepared for the feelings the old place
itself would call up, and as he opened a little wicket that led by a
shrubbery walk to the cottage, he was glad to throw himself on the first
seat he could find and wait till his heart could beat more measuredly.
What a strange thing was life--at least that conventional life we make for
ourselves--was his thought now. ‘Here am I ready to cross the globe, to be
the servant, the labourer of some rude settler in the wilds of Australia,
and yet I cannot be the herdsman here, and tend the cattle in the scenes
that I love, where every tree, every bush, every shady nook, and every
running stream is dear to me. I cannot serve my own kith and kin, but must
seek my bread from the stranger! This is our glorious civilisation. I
should like to hear in what consists its marvellous advantage.’
And then he began to think of those men of whom he had often
heard--gentlemen and men of refinement--who had gone out to Australia, and
who, in all the drudgery of daily labour--herding cattle on the plains or
conducting droves of horses long miles of way--still managed to retain the
habits of their better days, and, by the instinct of the breeding, which
had become a nature, to keep intact in their hearts the thoughts and the
sympathies and the affections that made them gentlemen.
‘If my dear aunt only knew me as I know myself, she would let me stay here
and serve her as the humblest labourer on her land. I can see no indignity
in being poor and faring hardly. I have known coarse food and coarse
clothing, and I never found that they either damped my courage or soured my
temper.’
It might not seem exactly the appropriate moment to have bethought him of
the solace of companionship in such poverty, but somehow his thoughts _did_
take that flight, and unwarrantable as was the notion, he fancied himself
returning at nightfall to his lowly cabin, and a certain girlish figure,
whom our reader knows as Kate Kearney, standing watching for his coming.
There was no one to be seen about as he approached the house. The
hall door, however, lay open. He entered and passed on to the little
breakfast-parlour on the left. The furniture was the same as before, but a
coarse fustian jacket was thrown on the back of a chair, and a clay-pipe
and a paper of tobacco stood on the table. While he was examining these
objects with some attention, a very ragged urchin, of some ten or eleven
years, entered the room with a furtive step, and stood watching him. From
this fellow, all that he could hear was that Miss Betty was gone away,
and that Peter was at the Kilbeggan Market, and though he tried various
questions, no other answers than these were to be obtained. Gorman now
tried to see the drawing-room and the library, but these, as well as the
dining-room, were all locked. He next essayed the bedrooms, but with the
same unsuccess. At length he turned to his own well-known corner--the
well-remembered little ‘green-room’--which he loved to think his own. This
too was locked, but Gorman remembered that by pressing the door underneath
with his walking-stick, he could lift the bolt from the old-fashioned
receptacle that held it, and open the door. Curious to have a last look at
a spot dear by so many memories, he tried the old artifice and succeeded.
He had still on his watch-chain the little key of an old marquetrie
cabinet, where he was wont to write, and now he was determined to write a
last letter to his aunt from the old spot, and send her his good-bye from
the very corner where he had often come to wish her ‘good-night.’
He opened the window and walked out on the little wooden balcony, from
which the view extended over the lawn and the broad belt of wood that
fenced the demesne. The Sliebh Bloom Mountain shone in the distance, and
in the calm of an evening sunlight the whole picture had something in its
silence and peacefulness of almost rapturous charm.
Who is there amongst us that has not felt, in walking through the rooms of
some uninhabited house, with every appliance of human comfort strewn about,
ease and luxury within, wavy trees and sloping lawn or eddying waters
without--who, in seeing all these, has not questioned himself as to why
this should be deserted? and why is there none to taste and feel all the
blessedness of such a lot as life here should offer? Is not the world full
of these places? is not the puzzle of this query of all lands and of all
peoples? That ever-present delusion of what we should do--what be if we
were aught other than ourselves: how happy, how contented, how unrepining,
and how good--ay, even our moral nature comes into the compact--this
delusion, I say, besets most of us through life, and we never weary of
believing how cruelly fate has treated us, and how unjust destiny has been
to a variety of good gifts and graces which are doomed to die unrecognised
and unrequited.
I will not go to the length of saying that Gorman O’Shea’s reflections went
thus far, though they did go to the extent of wondering why his aunt had
left this lovely spot, and asked himself, again and again, where she could
possibly have found anything to replace it.
‘My dearest aunt,’ wrote he, ‘in my own old room at the dear old desk, and
on the spot knitted to my heart by happiest memories, I sit down to send
you my last good-bye ere I leave Ireland for ever.
‘It is in no mood of passing fretfulness or impatience that I resolve to
go and seek my fortune in Australia. As I feel now, believing you are
displeased with me, I have no heart to go further into the question of my
own selfish interests, nor say why I resolve to give up soldiering, and why
I turn to a new existence. Had I been to you what I have hitherto been, had
I the assurance that I possessed the old claim on your love which made me
regard you as a dear mother, I should tell you of every step that has led
me to this determination, and how carefully and anxiously I tried to study
what might be the turning-point of my life.’
When he had written thus far, and his eyes had already grown glassy with
the tears which would force their way across them, a heavy foot was heard
on the stairs, the door was burst rudely open, and Peter Gill stood before
him.
No longer, however, the old peasant in shabby clothes, and with his look
half-shy, half-sycophant, but vulgarly dressed in broadcloth and bright
buttons, a tall hat on his head, and a crimson cravat round his neck. His
face was flushed, and his eye flashing and insolent, so that O’Shea only
feebly recognised him by his voice.
‘You thought you’d be too quick for me, young man,’ said the fellow, and
the voice in its thickness showed he had been drinking, ‘and that you would
do your bit of writing there before I’d be back, but I was up to you.’
‘I really do not know what you mean,’ cried O’Shea, rising; ‘and as it is
only too plain you have been drinking, I do not care to ask you.’
‘Whether I was drinking or no is my own business; there’s none to call me
to account now. I am here in my own house, and I order you to leave it,
and if you don’t go by the way you came in, by my soul you’ll go by that
window!’ A loud bang of his stick on the floor gave the emphasis to the
last words, and whether it was the action or the absurd figure of the man
himself overcame O’Shea, he burst out in a hearty laugh as he surveyed him.
‘I’ll make it no laughing matter to you,’ cried Gill, wild with passion,
and stepping to the door he cried out, ‘Come up, boys, every man of ye:
come up and see the chap that’s trying to turn me out of my holding.’
The sound of voices and the tramp of feet outside now drew O’Shea to the
window, and passing out on the balcony, he saw a considerable crowd of
country-people assembled beneath. They were all armed with sticks, and had
that look of mischief and daring so unmistakable in a mob. As the young man
stood looking at them, some one pointed him out to the rest, and a wild
yell, mingled with hisses, now broke from the crowd. He was turning away
from the spot in disgust when he found that Gill had stationed himself at
the window, and barred the passage.
‘The boys want another look at ye,’ said Gill insolently; ‘go back and show
yourself: it is not every day they see an informer.’
‘Stand back, you old fool, and let me pass,’ cried O’Shea.
‘Touch me if you dare; only lay one finger on me in my own house,’ said the
fellow, and he grinned almost in his face as he spoke.
‘Stand back,’ said Gorman, and suiting the action to the word, he raised
his arm to make space for him to pass out. Gill, no sooner did he feel the
arm graze his chest, than he struck O’Shea across the face; and though
the blow was that of an old man, the insult was so maddening that O’Shea,
seizing him by the arms, dragged him out upon the balcony.
‘He’s going to throw the old man over,’ cried several of those beneath, and
amidst the tumult of voices, a number soon rushed up the stairs and out
on the balcony, where the old fellow was clinging to O’Shea’s legs in his
despairing attempt to save himself. The struggle scarcely lasted many
seconds, for the rotten wood-work of the balcony creaked and trembled,
and at last gave way with a crash, bringing the whole party to the ground
together.
[Illustration: The balcony creaked and trembled, and at last gave way]
A score of sticks rained their blows on the luckless young man, and each
time that he tried to rise he was struck back and rolled over by a blow or
a kick, till at length he lay still and senseless on the sward, his face
covered with blood and his clothes in ribbons.
‘Put him in a cart, boys, and take him off to the gaol,’ said the attorney,
McEvoy. ‘We’ll be in a scrape about all this, if we don’t make _him_ in the
wrong.’
His audience fully appreciated the counsel, and while a few were busied in
carrying old Gill to the house--for a broken leg made him unable to reach
it alone--the others placed O’Shea on some straw in a cart, and set out
with him to Kilbeggan.
‘It is not a trespass at all,’ said McEvoy. ‘I’ll make it a burglary and
forcible entry, and if he recovers at all, I’ll stake my reputation I
transport him for seven years.’
A hearty murmur of approval met the speech, and the procession, with the
cart at their head, moved on towards the town.