Lord Kilgobbin

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 coa.r.s.e food and coa.r.s.e 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed on to the little breakfast-parlour on the left. The furniture was the same as before, but a coa.r.s.e 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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

'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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.surance 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 gla.s.sy 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 b.u.t.tons, a tall hat on his head, and a crimson cravat round his neck. His face was flushed, and his eye flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sing out on the balcony, he saw a considerable crowd of country-people a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sage.

'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 pa.s.s,' 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 s.p.a.ce for him to pa.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 trespa.s.s 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.

CHAPTER LV

TWO J.P.'S

It was the Tory magistrate, Mr. Flood--the same who had ransacked Walpole's correspondence--before whom the informations were sworn against Gorman O'Shea, and the old justice of the peace was, in secret, not sorry to see the question of land-tenure a source of dispute and quarrel amongst the very party who were always inveighing against the landlords.

When Lord Kilgobbin arrived at Kilbeggan it was nigh midnight, and as young O'Shea was at that moment a patient in the gaol infirmary, and sound asleep, it was decided between Kearney and his son that they would leave him undisturbed till the following morning.

Late as it was, Kearney was so desirous to know the exact narrative of events that he resolved on seeing Mr. Flood at once. Though d.i.c.k Kearney remonstrated with his father, and reminded him that old Tom Flood, as he was called, was a bitter Tory, had neither a civil word nor a kind thought for his adversaries in politics, Kearney was determined not to be turned from his purpose by any personal consideration, and being a.s.sured by the innkeeper that he was sure to find Mr. Flood in his dining-room and over his wine, he set out for the snug cottage at the entrance of the town, where the old justice of the peace resided.

Just as he had been told, Mr. Flood was still in the dinner-room, and with his guest, Tony Adams, the rector, seated with an array of decanters between them.

'Kearney--Kearney!' cried Flood, as he read the card the servant handed him. 'Is it the fellow who calls himself Lord Kilgobbin, I wonder?'

'Maybe so,' growled Adams, in a deep guttural, for he disliked the effort of speech.

'I don't know him, nor do I want to know him. He is one of your half-and-half Liberals that, to my thinking, are worse than the rebels themselves! What is this here in pencil on the back of the card?' Mr. K.

begs to apologise for the hour of his intrusion, and earnestly entreats a few minutes from Mr. Flood. 'Show him in, Philip, show him in; and bring some fresh gla.s.ses.'

Kearney made his excuses with a tact and politeness which spoke of a time when he mixed freely with the world, and old Flood was so astonished by the ease and good-breeding of his visitor that his own manner became at once courteous and urbane.

'Make no apologies about the hour, Mr. Kearney,' said he. 'An old bachelor's house is never very tight in discipline. Allow me to introduce Mr. Adams, Mr. Kearney, the best preacher in Ireland, and as good a judge of port wine as of theology.'

The responsive grunt of the parson was drowned in the pleasant laugh of the others, as Kearney sat down and filled his gla.s.s. In a very few words he related the reason of his visit to the town, and asked Mr. Flood to tell him what he knew of the late misadventure.

'Sworn information, drawn up by that worthy man, Pat McEvoy, the greatest rascal in Europe, and I hope I don't hurt you by saying it, Mr. Kearney.

Sworn information of a burglarious entry, and an aggravated a.s.sault on the premises and person of one Peter Gill, another local blessing--bad luck to him. The aforesaid--if I spoke of hi before--Gorman O'Shea, having, _suadente diabolo_, smashed down doors and windows, palisadings and palings, and broke open cabinets, chests, cupboards, and other contrivances. In a word, he went into another man's house, and when asked what he did there, he threw the proprietor out of the window. There's the whole of it.'

'Where was the house?'

'O'Shea's Barn.'

'But surely O'Shea's Barn, being the residence and property of his aunt, there was no impropriety in his going there?'

'The informant states that the place was in the tenancy of this said Gill, one of your own people, Mr. Kearney. I wish you luck of him.'

'I disown him, root and branch; he is a disgrace to any side. And where is Miss Betty O'Shea?'