Lord Kilgobbin

The exceptional state of a nation, in which the administration of justice mainly depends on those aids which a rigid morality might disparage--the social state of a people whose integrity calls for the application of means the most certain to disseminate distrust and disunion, are facts which const.i.tute reasons for political action that, however a.s.sailable in the mere abstract, the mind of statesmanlike form will at once accept as solid and effective, and to reject which would only show that, in over-looking the consequences of sentiment, a man can ignore the most vital interests of his country.'"'

'Does he say that they wrote to Donogan?' cried Kilgobbin, whose patience had been sorely pushed by the Premier's exordium.

'Let me read on, papa.'

'Skip all that, and get down to a simple question and answer, Kitty; don't read the long sentences.'

'This is how he winds up, papa. "I trust I have now, sir, satisfied the House that there are abundant reasons why this correspondence should not be produced on the table, while I have further justified my n.o.ble friend for a course of action in which the humanity of the man takes no l.u.s.tre from the glory of the statesman"--then there are some words in Latin--"and the right hon. gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, in which some of the Opposition were heard to join."'

'I want to be told, after all, did they write the letter to say Donogan was to be let escape?'

'Would it have been a great crime, uncle?' said Nina artlessly.

'I'm not going into that. I'm only asking what the people over us say is the best way to govern us. I'd like to know, once for all, what was wrong and what was right in Ireland.'

'Has not the Premier just told you, sir,' replied Nina, 'that it is always the reverse of what obtains everywhere else?'

'I have had enough of it, anyhow,' cried d.i.c.k, who, though not intending it before, now was carried away by a momentary gust of pa.s.sion to make the avowal.

'Have you been in the Cabinet all this time, then, without our knowing it?'

asked Nina archly.

'It is not of the Cabinet I was speaking, mademoiselle. It was of the country.' And he answered haughtily.

'And where would you go, d.i.c.k, and find better?' said Kate.

'Anywhere. I should find better in America, in Canada, in the Far West, in New Zealand--but I mean to try in Australia.'

'And what will you do when you get there?' asked Kilgobbin, with a grim humour in his look.

'Do tell me, Cousin d.i.c.k, for who knows that it might not suit me also?'

Young Kearney filled his gla.s.s, and drained it without speaking. At last he said, 'It will be for you, sir, to say if I make the trial. It is clear enough, I have no course open to me here. For a few hundred pounds, or, indeed, for anything you like to give me, you get rid of me for ever. It will be the one piece of economy my whole life comprises.'

'Stay at home, d.i.c.k, and give to your own country the energy you are willing to bestow on a strange land,' said Kate.

'And labour side by side with the peasant I have looked down upon since I was able to walk.'

'Don't look down on him, then--do it no longer. If you would treat the first stranger you met in the bush as your equal, begin the Christian practice in your own country.'

'But he needn't do that at all,' broke in the old man. 'If he would take to strong shoes and early rising here at Kilgobbin, he need never go to Geelong for a living. Your great-grandfathers lived here for centuries, and the old house that sheltered them is still standing.'

'What should I stay for--?' He had got thus far when his eyes met Nina's, and he stopped and hesitated, and, as a deep blush covered his face, faltered out, 'Gorman O'Shea says he is ready to go with me, and two fellows with less to detain them in their own country would be hard to find.'

'O'Shea will do well enough,' said the old man; 'he was not brought up to kid-leather boots and silk linings in his greatcoat. There's stuff in _him_, and if it comes to sleeping under a haystack or dining on a red-herring, he'll not rise up with rheumatism or heartburn. And what's better than all, he'll not think himself a hero because he mends his own boots or lights his own kitchen-fire.'

'A letter for your honour,' said the servant, entering with a very informal-looking note on coa.r.s.e paper, and fastened with a wafer. 'The gossoon, sir, is waiting for an answer; he run every mile from Moate.'

'Read it, Kitty,' said the old man, not

'It is dated "Moate Jail, seven o'clock,"' said Kitty, as she read: '"Dear Sir,--I have got into a stupid sc.r.a.pe, and have been committed to jail.

Will you come, or send some one to bail me out. The thing is a mere trifle, but the 'being locked up' is very hard to bear.--Yours always, G. O'Shea."'

'Is this more Fenian work?' cried Kilgobbin.

'I'm certain it is not, sir,' said d.i.c.k. 'Gorman O'Shea has no liking for them, nor is he the man to sympathise with what he owns he cannot understand. It is a mere accidental row.'

'At all events, we must see to set him at liberty. Order the gig, d.i.c.k, and while they are putting on the harness, I'll finish this decanter of port.

If it wasn't that we're getting retired shopkeepers on the bench, we'd not see an O'Shea sent to prison like a gossoon that stole a bunch of turnips.'

'What has he been doing, I wonder?' said Nina, as she drew her arm within Kate's and left the room.

'Some loud talk in the bar-parlour, perhaps,' was Kate's reply, and the toss of her head as she said it implied more even than the words.

CHAPTER LIV

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 st.u.r.dy 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 a.s.sizes, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ladys.h.i.+p liked' had followed every sentence as she read the doc.u.ment 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 a.s.surance he always gave 'that her honour knew what was best. G.o.d 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 pract.i.tioner, 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 a.s.sizes, 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 a.s.sured 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.