The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

But a more detrimental result followed than even these: the truly well-conducted and respectable portion of the tenantry felt ashamed to adopt plans and notions they knew inapplicable and unsuited to their condition; they therefore stood aloof, and by their honest forbearance incurred the reproach of obstinacy and barbarism; while the idle, the lazy, and the profligate, became converts to any doctrine or class of opinion, which promised an easy life and the rich man’s favour. These, at first sight, found favour with him, as possessing more intelligence and tractibility than their neighbours, and for them, cottages were built, rents abated, improved stock introduced, and a hundred devices organized to make them an example for all imitation. Unhappily the conditions of the contract were misconceived: the people believed that all the landlord required was a patient endurance of his benevolence; they never reckoned on any reciprocity in duty; they never dreamed that a Swiss cottage cannot be left to the fortunes of a mud cabin; that stagnant pools before the door, weed-grown fields, and broken fences, harmonize ill with rural pailings, drill cultivation, and trim hedges. They took all they could get, but assuredly they never understood the obligation of repayment. They thought (not very unreasonably perhaps), “it’s the old gentleman’s hobby that we should adopt a number of habits and customs we were never used to – live in strange houses and work with strange tools. Be it so; we are willing to gratify him,” said they, “but let him pay for his whistle.”

He, on the other hand, thought they were greedily adopting what they only endured, and deemed all converts to his opinion who lived on his bounty. Hence, each morning presented an array of the most worthless, irreclaimable of the tenantry around his door, all eagerly seeking to be included in some new scheme of regeneration, by which they understood three meals a day and nothing to do.

How to play off these two distinct and very opposite classes, Mr. Sam Wylie knew to perfection; and while he made it appear that one portion of the tenantry whose rigid rejection of Sir Marmaduke’s doctrines proceeded from a sturdy spirit of self-confidence and independence, were a set of wild, irreclaimable savages; he softly insinuated his compliments on the success in other quarters, while, in his heart he well knew what results were about to happen.

“They’re here now, sir,” said Wylie, as he glanced through the window towards the lawn, where, with rigid punctuality Sir Marmaduke each morning held his levee; and where, indeed, a very strange and motley crowd appeared.

The old baronet threw up the sash, and as he did so, a general mar-mur of blessings and heavenly invocations met his ears – sounds, that if one were to judge from his brightening eye and beaming countenance, he relished well. No longer, however, as of old, suppliant, and entreating, with tremulous voice and shrinking gaze did they make their advances. These people were now enlisted in his army of “regenerators”; they were converts to the landlords manifold theories of improved agriculture, neat cottages, pig-styes, dove-cots, bee-hives, and heaven knows what other suggestive absurdity, ease and affluence ever devised to plate over the surface of rude and rugged misery.

“The Lord bless your honour every morning you rise, ‘tis the iligant little place ye gave me to live in. Musha, ‘tis happy and comfortable I do be every night, now, barrin’ that the slates does be falling betimes – bad luck to them for slates, one of them cut little Joe’s head this morning, and I brought him up for a bit of a plaster.”

This was the address of a stout, middle-aged woman, with a man’s great coat around her in lieu of a cloak.

“Slates falling – why doesn’t your husband fasten them on again? he said he was a handy fellow, and could do any thing about a house.”

“It was no lie then; Thady Morris is a good warrant for a job any day, and if it was thatch was on it – ”

“Thatch – why, woman, I’ll have no thatch; I don’t want the cabins burned down, nor will I have them the filthy hovels they used to be.”

“Why would your honour? – sure there’s rayson and sinse agin it,” was the chorus of all present, while the woman resumed —

“Well, he tried that same too, your honour, and if he did, by my sowl, it was worse for him, for when he seen the slates going off every minit with the wind, he put the harrow on the top – ”

“The harrow – put the harrow on the roof?”

“Just so – wasn’t it natural? But as sure as the wind riz, down came the harrow, and stript every dirty kippeen of a slate away with it.”

“So the roof is off,” said Sir Marmaduke with stifled rage.

“Tis as clean as my five fingers, the same rafters,” said she with unmoved gravity.

“This is too bad – Wylie, do you hear this?” said the old gentleman, with a face dark with passion.

“Aye,” chorused in some half dozen friends of the woman – “nothing stands the wind like the thatch.”

Wylie whispered some words to his master, and by a side gesture, motioned to the woman to take her departure. The hint was at once taken, and her place immediately filled by another. This was a short little old fellow, in yellow rags, his face concealed by a handkerchief, on removing which, he discovered a countenance that bore no earthly resemblance to that of a human being: the eyes were entirely concealed by swollen masses of cheek and eye-lid – the nose might have been eight noses – and the round immense lips, and the small aperture between, looked like the opening in a ballot-box.

“Who is this? – what’s the matter here?” said Sir Marmaduke, as he stared in mingled horror and astonishment at the object before him.

“Faix, ye may well ax,” said the little man, in a thick guttural voice. “Sorra one of the neighbours knew me this morning. I’m Tim M’Garrey, of the cross-roads.”

“What has happened to you then?” asked Sir Marmaduke, somewhat ruffled by the sturdy tone of the ragged fellow’s address.

“‘Tis your own doing, then – divil a less – you may be proud of your work.”

“My doing! – how do you dare to say so?”

“‘Tis no darin’ at all – ‘tis thrue, as I’m here. Them bloody beehives you made me take home wid me, I put them in a corner of the house, and by bad luck it was the pig’s corner, and, sorra bit, but she rooted them out, and upset them, and with that, the varmint fell upon us all, and it was two hours before we killed them – divil such a fight ever ye seen: Peggy had the beetle, and I the griddle, for flattening them agin the wall, and maybe we didn’t work hard, while the childer was roarin’ and bawlin’ for the bare life.”

“Gracious mercy, would this be credited? – could any man conceive barbarism like this?” cried Sir Marmaduke, as with uplifted hands he stood overwhelmed with amazement.

Wylie again whispered something, and again telegraphed to the applicant to move off; but the little man stood his ground and continued. “‘Twas a heifer you gave Tom Lenahan, and it’s a dhroll day, the M’Garrey’s warn’t as good as the Lenahans, to say we’d have nothing but bees, and them was to get a dacent baste!”

“Stand aside, sir,” said Sir Marmaduke; “Wylie has got my orders about you. Who is this?”

“Faix, me, sir – Andrew Maher. I’m come to give your honour the key – I couldn’t stop there any longer.”

“What! not stay in that comfortable house, with the neat shop I had built and stocked for you? What does this mean?”

“‘Tis just that, then, your honour – the house is a nate little place, and barrin’ the damp, and the little grate, that won’t burn turf at all, one might do well enough in it; but the shop is the divil entirely.”

“How so – what’s wrong about it?”

“Every thing’s wrong about it. First and foremost, your honour, the neighbours has no money; and though they might do mighty well for want of tobacco, and spirits, and bohea, and candles, and soap, and them trifles, as long as they never came near them, throth they couldn’t have them there fornint their noses, without wishing for a taste; and so one comes in for a pound of sugar, and another wants a ha’ porth of nails, or a piece of naygar-head, or an ounce of starch – and divil a word they have, but ‘put it in the book, Andy.’ By my conscience, it’s a quare book would hould it all.”

“But they’ll pay in time – they’ll pay when they sell the crops.”

“Bother! I ax yer honour’s pardon – I was manin’ they’d see me far enough first. Sure, when they go to market, they’ll have the rint, and the tithe, and the taxes; and when that’s done, and they get a sack of seed potatoes for next year, I’d like to know where’s the money that’s to come to me?”

“Is this true, Wylie? – are they as poor as this?” asked Sir Marmaduke.

Wylie’s answer was still a whispered one.

“Well,” said Andy, with a sigh, “there’s the key any way. I’d rather be tachin’ the gaffers again, than be keeping the same shop.”

These complaints were followed by others, differing in kind and complexion, but all, agreeing in the violence with which they were urged, and all, inveighing against “the improvements” Sir Marmaduke was so interested in carrying forward. To hear them, you would suppose that the grievances suggested by poverty and want, were more in unison with comfort and enjoyment, than all the appliances wealth can bestow: and that the privations to which habit has inured us, are sources of greater happiness, than we often feel in the use of unrestricted liberty.

Far from finding any contented, Sir Marmaduke only saw a few among the number, willing to endure his bounties, as the means of obtaining other concessions they desired more ardently. They would keep their cabins clean, if any thing was to be made by it: they’d weed their potatoes, if Sir Marmaduke would only offer a price for the weeds. In fact, they were ready to engage in any arduous pursuit of cleanliness, decency, and propriety, but it must be for a consideration. Otherwise, they saw no reason for encountering labour, which brought no requital; and the real benefits offered to them, came so often associated with newfangled and absurd innovations, that, both became involved in the same disgrace, and both sunk in the same ridicule together. These were the refuse of the tenantry; for we have seen that the independent feeling of the better class held them aloof from all the schemes of “improvement,” which the others, by participating in, contaminated.

Sir Marmaduke might, then, be pardoned, if he felt some sinking of the heart at his failure; and, although encouraged by his daughter to persevere in his plan to the end, more than once he was on the brink of abandoning the field in discomfiture, and confessing that the game was above his skill. Had he but taken one-half the pains to learn something of national character, that he bestowed on his absurd efforts to fashion it to his liking, his success might have been different. He would, at least, have known how to distinguish between the really deserving, and the unworthy recipients of his bounty – between the honest and independent peasant, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, and the miserable dependant, only seeking a life of indolence, at any sacrifice of truth or character; and even this knowledge, small as it may seem, will go far in appreciating the difficulties which attend all attempts at Irish social improvement, and explain much of the success or failure observable in different parts of the country. But Sir Marmaduke fell into the invariable error of his countrymen – he first suffered himself to be led captive, by “blarney,” and when heartily sick of the deceitfulness and trickery of those who employed it, coolly sat down with the conviction, that there was no truth in the land.

CHAPTER XVI. THE FOREIGN LETTER

The arrival of a post-letter at the O’Donoghue house was an occurrence of sufficient rarity to create some excitement in the household; and many a surmise, as to what new misfortune hung over the family, was hazarded between Mrs. Branagan and Kerry O’Leary, as the latter poised and balanced the epistle in his hand, as though its weight and form might assist him in his divination.

After having conned over all the different legal processes which he deemed might be conveyed in such a shape, and conjured up in his imagination a whole army of sheriffs, sub-sheriffs, bailiffs, and drivers, of which the ominous letter should prove the forerunner, he heaved a heavy sigh at the gloomy future his forebodings had created, and slowly ascended towards his master’s bed-room.

“How is Herbert?” said the O’Donoghue, as he heard the footsteps beside his bed, for he had been dreaming of the boy a few minutes previous. “Who is that? Ah! Kerry. Well, how is he to-day?”

“Troth there’s no great change to spake of,” said Kerry, who, not having made any inquiry himself, and never expecting to have been questioned on the subject, preferred this safe line of reply, as he deemed it, to a confession of his ignorance.

“Did he sleep well, Kerry?”

“Oh! for the matter of the sleep we won’t boast of it. But here’s a letter for your honour, come by the post.”

“Leave it on the bed, and tell me about the boy.”

“Faix there’s nothing particular, then, to tell yer honour – sometimes he’d be one way, sometimes another – and more times the same way again. That’s the way he’d be all the night through.”

The O’Donoghue pondered for a second or two, endeavouring to frame some distinct notion from these scanty materials, and then said —

“Send Master Mark to me.” At the same instant he drew aside the curtain, and broke the seal of the letter. The first few lines, however, seemed to satisfy his curiosity, although the epistle was written in a close hand, and extended over three sides of the paper; and he threw it carelessly on the bed, and lay down again once more. During all this time, however, Kerry managed to remain in the room, and, while affecting to arrange clothes and furniture, keenly scrutinized the features of his master. It was of no use, however. The old man’s looks were as apathetic as usual, and he seemed already to have forgotten the missive Kerry had endowed with so many terrors and misfortunes.

“Herbert has passed a favourable night,” said Mark, entering a few moments after. “The fever seems to have left him, and, except for debility, I suppose there is little to ail him. What! – a letter! Who is this from?”

“From Kate,” said the old man listlessly. “I got as far as ‘My dear uncle;’ the remainder must await a better light, and, mayhap, sharper eyesight too – for the girl has picked up this new mode of scribbling, which is almost unintelligible to me.”

As the O’Donoghue was speaking, the young man had approached the window, and was busily perusing the letter. As he read, his face changed colour more than once. Breaking off, he said —

“You don’t know, then, what news we have here? More embarrassment – ay, by Jove, and a heavier one than even it seems at first sight. The French armies, it appears, are successful all over the Low Countries, and city after city falling into their possession; and so, the convents are breaking up, and the Sacré Cour, where Kate: is, has set free its inmates, who are returning to their friends. She comes here.”

“What! – here?” said the O’Donoghue, with some evidence of doubt at intelligence so strange and unexpected. “Why, Mark, my boy, that’s impossible – the house is a ruin; we haven’t a room; we have no servants, and have nothing like accommodation for the girl.”

“Listen to this, then,” said Mark, as he read from the letter: – “You may then conceive, my dear old papa – for I must call you the old name again, now that we are to meet – how happy I am to visit Carrig-na-curra once more. I persuade myself I remember the old beech wood in the glen, and the steep path beside the waterfall, and the wooden railings to guard against the precipice. Am I not right? And there’s an ash tree over the pool, lower down. Cousin Mark climbed it to pluck the berries for me, and fell in, too. There’s memory for you!”

“She’ll be puzzled to find the wood now,” said the O’Donoghue, with a sad attempt at a smile. “Go on, Mark.”

“It’s all the same kind of thing: she speaks of Molly Cooney’s cabin, and the red boat-house, and fifty things that are gone many a day ago. Strange enough, she remembers what I myself have long since forgotten. ‘How I long for my own little blue bed-room, that looked out on Keim-an-eigh P – ”

“There, Mark – don’t read any more, my lad. Poor dear Kate! – what would she think of the place now?”

“The thing is impossible,” said Mark, sternly; “the girl has got a hundred fancies and tastes, unsuited to our rude life; her French habits would ill agree with our barbarism. You must write to your cousin – that old Mrs. Bedingfield – if that’s her name. She must take her for the present, at least; she offered it once before.”

“Yes,” said the old man, with an energy he had not used till now, “she did, and I refused. My poor brother detested that woman, and would never, had he lived, have entrusted his daughter to her care. If she likes it, the girl shall make this her home. My poor Harry’s child shall not ask twice for a shelter, while I have one to offer her.”

“Have you thought, sir, how long you may be able to extend the hospitality you speak of? Is this house now your own, that you can make a proffer of it to any one? – and if it were, is it here, within these damp, discoloured walls, with ruin without and within, that you’d desire a guest – and such a guest?”

“What do you mean, boy?”

“I mean what I say. The girl educated in the midst of luxury, pampered and flattered – we heard that from the Abbé – what a favourite she was there, and how naturally she assumed airs of command and superiority over the girls of her own age – truly, if penance were the object, the notion is not a bad one.”

“I say it again – this is her home. I grieve it should be so rude a one – but, I’ll never refuse to let her share it.”

“Nor would I,” muttered Mark, gloomily, “if it suited either her habits, or her tastes. Let her come, however; a week’s experience will do more to undeceive her than if we wrote letters for a twelvemonth.”

“You must write to her, Mark; you must tell her, that matters have not gone so well with us latterly – that she’ll see many changes here; but mind, you say how happy we are to receive her.”

“She can have her choice of blue bed-rooms, too – shall I say that?” said Mark, almost savagely. “The damp has given them the proper tinge for her fancy; and as to the view she speaks of, assuredly there is nothing to baulk it: the window has fallen out many a day ago, that looked on Keim-an-eigh.”

“How can you torture me this way, boy?” said the old man, with a look of imploring, to which his white hairs and aged features gave a most painful expression. But Mark turned away, and made no answer.

“My uncle,” said he, after a pause, “must answer this epistle. Letter-writing is no burthen to him. In fact, I believe, he rather likes it; so here goes to do him a favour. It is seldom the occasion presents itself.”

It was not often that Mark O’Donoghue paid a visit to Sir Archibald in his chamber; and the old man received him as he entered with all the show of courtesy he would have extended to a stranger – a piece of attention which was very far, indeed, from relieving Mark of any portion of his former embarrassment.

“I have brought you a letter, sir,” said he, almost ere he took his seat – “a letter which my father would thank you to reply to. It is from my cousin Kate, who is about to return to Ireland, and take up her abode here.”

“Ye dinna mean she’s coming here, to Carrig-na-curra?”

“It is even so! though I don’t wonder at your finding it hard of belief.”

“It’s mair than that – it’s far mair – it’s downright incredible.”

“I thought so, too; but my father cannot agree with me. He will not believe that this old barrack is not a baronial castle; and persists in falling back on what is past, rather than look on the present, not to speak of the future.”

“But she canna live here, Mark,” said Sir Archy, his mind ever dwelling on the great question at issue. “There’s no’a spot in the whole house she could inhabit. I ken something of these French damsels, and their ways; and the strangers that go there for education are a’ worse than the natives. I mind the time I was in Paris with his Royal – ” Sir Archy coughed, and reddened up, and let fall his snuff-box, spilling all the contents on the floor.

“Gude save us, here’s a calamity! It was real macabaw, and cost twa shillings an ounce. I maun even see if I canna scrape it up wi’ a piece of paper;” and so, he set himself diligently to glean up the scattered dust, muttering, all the time, maledictions on his bad luck.

Mark never moved nor spoke the entire time; but sat with the open letter in his hand, patiently awaiting the resumption of the discussion.

“Weel, weel,” exclaimed Sir Archy, as he resumed his seat once more; “let us see the epistle, and perhaps we may find some clue to put her off.”

“My father insists on her coming,” said Mark, sternly.

“So he may, lad,” replied Sir Archy; “but she may ha’e her ain reasons for declining – dinna ye see that? This place is a ruin. Wha’s to say it is no’ undergoing a repair – that the roof is off, and will not be on for sax months to come. The country, too, is in a vara disturbed state. Folks are talking in a suspicious way.”

Mark thought of the midnight march he had witnessed; but said nothing.

“There’s a fever, besides, in the house, and wha can tell the next to tak’ it. The Lord be mercifu’ to us!” added he gravely, as if the latter thought approached somewhat too close on a temptation of Providence.

“If she’s like what I remember her as a child,” replied Mark, “your plan would be a bad one for its object. Tell her the place is a ruin, and she’d give the world to see it for bare curiosity; say, there was a likelihood of a rebellion, and she would risk her life to be near it; and as for a fever, we never were able to keep her out of the cabins when there was sickness going. Faith, I believe it was the danger, and not the benevolence, of the act charmed her.”

“You are no’ far wrang. I mind her weel – she was a saucy cutty; and I canna forget the morning she gave me a bunch o’ thistles on my birth day, and ca’ed it a ‘Scotch bouquey.’”

“You had better read the letter in any case,” said Mark, as he presented the epistle. Sir Archy took it, and perused it from end to end without a word; then laying it open on his knee, he said —

“The lassie’s heart is no’ far wrang, Mark, depend upon it. Few call up the simple memories o’ childish days, if they have no’ retained some of the guileless spirit that animated them. I wad like to see her mysel’,” said he, after a pause. “But what have we here in the postscript?” – and he read aloud the following lines: —

“I have too good a recollection of a Carrig-na-curra household, to make any apology for adding one to the number below stairs, in the person of my maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, from whose surprise and astonishment at our Irish mountains I anticipate a rich treat. She is a true Parisian, who cannot believe in any thing outside the Boulevards. What will she think of Mrs. Branagan and Kerry O’Leary? – and what will they think of her?”

“Lord save us, Mark, this is an awfu’ business; a French waiting woman here! Why, she might as weel bring a Bengal tiger! I protest I’d rather see the one than the other.”

“She’ll not stay long; make your mind easy about her; nor will Kate either, if she need such an attendant.”

“True enough, Mark, we maun let the malady cure itsel’; and so, I suppose, the lassie must even see the nakedness o’ the land wi’ her ain eyes, though I’d just as soon we could ‘put the cover on the parritch,’ as the laird said, ‘and make the fules think it brose.’ It’s no ower pleasant to expose one’s poverty.”

“Then you’ll write the letter,” said Mark, rising, “and we must do what we can, in the way of preparation. The time is short enough too, for that letter was written almost a month ago – she might arrive this very week.”

As he spoke, the shuffling sounds of feet were heard in the corridor outside; the young man sprung to the door, and looked out, and just caught sight of Kerry O’Leary, with a pair of boots under his arm, descending the stairs.

“That fellow, Kerry – listening as usual,” said Mark. “I heard him at my door about a fortnight since, when I was talking to Herbert, and I sent a bullet through the pannel – I thought it might cure him.”