The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

“I wonder it did na kill him!” exclaimed M’Nab in horror.

“No, no, my hand is too steady for that. I aimed at least two inches above his head – it might have grazed his hair.”

“By my word, I’ll no’ play the eaves-dropper wi’ you, Mark; or, at least, I’d like to draw the charge o’ your pistols first.”

“She can have my room,” said Mark, not heeding the speech. “I’ll take that old tower they call the guard-room; I fancy I shall not be dispossessed for a considerable time,” – and the youth left the chamber to look after the arrangements he spoke of.

“‘Tis what I tould you,” said Kerry, as he drew his stool beside the kitchen fire; “I was right enough, she’s coming back again to live here – I was listening at the door, and heerd it all.”

“And she’s laving the blessed nunnery!” exclaimed Mrs. Branagan, with a holy horror in her countenance – “desarting the elegant place, with the priests, and monks, and friars, to come here again, in the middle of every wickedness and divilment – ochone! ochone!”

“What wickedness and what divilment are you spaking about?” said Kerry, indignantly, at the aspersion thus cast on the habits of the house.

Mrs. Branagan actually started at the bare idea of a contradiction, and turned on him a look of fiery wrath, as she said: —

“Be my conscience you’re bould to talk that way to me! – What wickedness! Isn’t horse-racing, card-playing, raffling, wickedness? Isn’t drinking and swearin’ wickedness? Isn’t it wickedness to kill three sheep a week, and a cow a fortnight, to feed a set of dirty spalpeens of grooms and stable chaps? Isn’t it wickedness – botheration to you – but I wouldn’t be losing my time talking to you! When was one of ye at his duties? Answer me that. How much did one of ye pay at Ayster or Christmas, these ten years? Signs on it, Father Luke hasn’t a word for ye when he comes here – he trates ye with contimpt.”

Kerry was abashed and terrified. He little knew when he pulled up the sluice-gate, the torrent that would flow down; and now, would have made any “amende,” to establish a truce again; but Mrs. Branagan was a woman, and, having seen the subjugation of her adversary, her last thought was mercy.

“Wickedness, indeed! It’s fifty years out of purgatory, sorra less, to live ten years here, and see what goes on.”

“Divil a lie in it,” chimed in Kerry, meekly; “there’s no denying a word you say.”

“I’d like to see who’d dare deny it – and, sign’s on it, there’s a curse on the place – nothing thrives in it.”

“Faix, then, ye mustn’t say that, any how,” said Kerry, insinuatingly: “you have no rayson to spake again it. ‘Twas Tuesday week last I heerd Father Luke say – it was to myself he said it – ‘How is Mrs. Branagan, Kerry?’ says he. ‘She’s well and hearty, your reverence,’ says I. ‘I’ll tell you what she is, Kerry,’ says he, ‘she’s looking just as I knew her five-and-thirty years ago; and a comelier, dacenter woman wasn’t in the three baronies. I remember well,’ says he, ‘I seen her at the fair of Killarney, and she had a cap with red ribbons.’ Hadn’t ye a cap with red ribbons in it?” A nod was the response.

“True for him, ye see he didn’t forget it; and says he, ‘She took the shine out of the fair; she could give seven pounds, and half a distance, to ere a girl there, and beat her after by a neck.’”

“What’s that ye’re saying?” said Mrs. Branagan, who didn’t comprehend the figurative language of the turf, particularly when coming from Father Luke’s lips.

“I’m saying ye were the purtiest woman that walked the fair-green,” said Kerry, correcting his phraseology.

“Father Luke was a smart little man then himself, and had a nate leg and foot.”

“Killarney was a fine place I’m tould,” said Kerry, with a dexterous shift to change the topic. “I wasn’t often there myself, but I heerd it was the iligant fair entirely.”

“So it was,” said Mrs. Branagan; “there never was the kind of sport and divarsion wasn’t there. It begun on a Monday and went through the week; and short enough the time was. There was dancing, and fighting, and singing, and ‘stations,’ up to Aghadoe and down again on the bare knees, and a pilgrimage to the holy well – three times round that, maybe after a jig two hours long; and there was a dwarf that tould fortunes, and a friar that sould gospels agin fever, and fallin’ sickness, and ballad-singers, and play-actors. Musha, there never was the like of it;” and in this strain did, she pour forth a flood of impassioned eloquence on the recollection of those carnal pleasures and enjoyments which, but a few minutes before, she had condemned so rigidly in others, nor was it till at the very close of her speech that she suddenly perceived how she had wandered from her text; then with a heavy groan she muttered – “Ayeh! we’re sinful craytures, the best of us.”

Kerry responded to the sentiment with a fac-simile sigh, and the peace was ratified.

“You wouldn’t believe now what Miss Kate is bringing over with her – faix, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Maybe a monkey,” said Mrs. Branagan, who had a vague notion that France lay somewhere within the tropics.

“Worse nor that.”

“Is it a bear?” asked she again.

“No, but a French maid, to dress her hair, and powder her, and put patches on her face.”

“Whisht, I tell you,” cried Mrs. Branagan, “and don’t be talking that way. Miss Kate was never the one to turn to the likes of them things.”

“‘Tis truth I’m telling ye then; I heerd it all between the master and Master Mark, and afterwards with ould Sir Archy, and the three of them is in a raal fright about the maid; they say she’ll be the divil for impidence.”

“Will she then!” said Mrs. Branagan, with an eye glistening in anticipation of battle.

“The never a day’s peace or ease we’re to have again, when she’s here – ‘tis what the master says. ‘I pity poor Mrs. Branagan,’ says he; ‘she’s a quiet crayture that wont take her own part, and – ‘”

“Won’t I? Be my conscience, we’ll soon see that.”

“Them’s his words – ‘and if Kerry and she don’t lay their heads together to make the place too hot for her, she’ll bully the pair of them.’”

“Lave it to myself – lave it to me alone, Kerry O’Leary.”

“I was thinking that same, ma’am,” said Kerry, with a droll leer as he spoke; “I’d take the odds on you any day, and never ask the name of the other horse.”

“I’ll lay the mark of my fingers on her av she says ‘pays,’” said Mrs. Branagan, with an energy that looked like truth.

Meanwhile, Kerry, perceiving that her temper was up, spared nothing to aggravate her passion, retailing every possible and impossible affront the new visitor might pass off on her, and expressing the master’s sorrows at the calamities awaiting her.

“If she isn’t frightened out of the country at once, there’s no help for it,” said he at last. “I have a notion myself, but sure maybe it’s a bad one.”

“What is it then? – spake it out free.”

“‘Tis just to wait for the chaise – she’ll come in a chaise, it’s likely.”

But what was Kerry’s plan, neither Mrs. Branagan nor the reader are destined to hear, for at that moment a loud summons at the hall door – a very unusual sound – announced the arrival of a stranger; Kerry, therefore, had barely time for a hasty toilet with a pocket-comb, before a small fragment of looking-glass he carried in his pocket, as he hastened to receive the visitor.

CHAPTER XVII. KATE O’DONOGHUE

Before Kerry O’Leary had reached the hall, the object around whose coming all his schemes revolved, was already in her uncle’s arms.

“My dear, dear Kate!” said the old man, as he embraced her again and again, while she, overcome by a world of conflicting emotions, concealed her face upon his shoulder.

“This is Mark, my dearest girl – cousin Mark.”

The girl looked up, and fixed her large full eyes upon the countenance of the young man, as, in an attitude of bashful hesitation, he stood, uncertain how far the friendship of former days warranted his advances. She, too, seemed equally confused; and when she held out her hand, and he took it half coldly, the meeting augured but poorly for warmth of heart on either side.

“And Herbert – where is he?” cried she eagerly, hoping to cover the chilling reception by the inquiry – “and my uncle Archy – ”

“Is here to answer for himsel’,” said M’Nab, quietly, as he came rapidly forward and kissed her on either cheek; and, with an arm leaning on each of the old men, she walked forward to the drawing-room.

“And are you alone, my dear child – have you come alone?” said the O’Donoghue.

“Even so, papa; – my attached and faithful Hortense left me at Bristol. Sea sickness became stronger than affection. She had a dream, besides, that she was lost, devoured, or carried off by a merman – I forget what. And the end was, she refused to go further, and did her best to persuade me to the same opinion. She didn’t remember that I had sent on my effects, and that my heart was here already.”

“My own dearest child!” said O’Donoghue, as he pressed her hand fervently between his own.

“But how have ye journeyed by yoursel’?” said Sir Archy, as he gazed on the slight and delicate figure before him.

“Wonderfully well, uncle. During the voyage every one was most polite and attentive to me. There was a handsome young Guardsman who would have been more, had he not been gentleman enough to know that I was a lady. And, once at Cork, I met, the very moment of landing, with a kind old friend, Father Luke, who took care of me hither. He only parted with me at the gate, not wishing to interfere, as he said, with our first greetings. But I don’t see Herbert – where is he?”

“Poor Herbert has been dangerously ill, my dear,” said the father, “I scarcely think it safe for him to see you.”

“No, no,” interposed Sir Archy, feelingly. “If the sight of her can stir the seared heart of an auld carle like mysel’, it wad na be the surest way to calm the frenzied blood of a youth.”

Perhaps Sir Archy was not far wrong. Kate O’Donoghue was, indeed, a girl of no common attraction. Her figure, rather below than above the middle size, was yet so perfectly moulded, that for very symmetry and grace it seemed as if such should have been the standard of womanly beauty, while her countenance had a character of loveliness, even more striking than beautiful; her eyes were large, full, and of a liquid blue that resembled black; her hair, a rich brown, through which a golden tinge was seen to run, almost the colour of an autumn sun-set, giving a brilliancy to her complexion which, in its transparent beauty, needed no such aid; but her mouth was the feature whose expression, more than any other, possessed a peculiar charm. In speaking, the rounded lips moved with a graceful undulation, more expressive than mere sound, while, as she listened, the slightest tremble of the lip harmonizing with the brilliant glance of her eyes, gave a character of rapid intelligence to her face, well befitting the vivid temper of her nature. She looked her very self – a noble-hearted, high-spirited girl, without a thought save for what was honourable and lofty; one who accepted no compromise with a doubtful line of policy, but eagerly grasped at the right, and stood firmly by the consequence. Although educated within the walls of a convent, she had mixed, her extreme youth considered, much in the world of the city she lived in, and was thus as accomplished in all the “usage,” and conventional habits of society, as she was cultivated in those gifts and graces which give it all its ornament. To a mere passing observer there might seem somewhat of coquetry in her manner; but very little observation would show, that such unerring gracefulness cannot be the result of mere practice, and that, innate character had assumed that garb which best suited it, and not one to be merely worn for a season. Her accent, too, when she spoke English, had enough of foreign intonation about it to lay the ground for a charge of affectation; but he should have been a sturdy critic who could have persisted in the accusation. The fear was rather, that one leaned to the very fault of pronunciation as an excellence, so much of piquancy did it occasionally lend to expressions, which, from other lips, had seemed tame and common-place. To any one who has seen the graceful coquetry of French manner engrafted on the more meaning eloquence of Irish beauty, my effort at a portrait will appear a very meagre and barren outline; and I feel how poorly I have endeavoured to convey any idea of one, whose Spanish origin had left a legacy of gracefulness and elegance, to be warmed into life by the fervid character of the Celt, and tempered again by the consummate attraction of French manner.

The ease and kindliness of spirit with which she sat between the two old men, listening in turn to each, or answering with graceful alacrity the questions they proffered – the playful delicacy with which she evaded the allusions they made from time to time to the disappointment the ruined house must have occasioned her – and the laughing gaiety with which she spoke of the new life about to open before her, were actually contagious. They already forgot the fears her anticipated coming had inspired; and gazed on her with the warm affection that should wait on a welcome. Oh! what a gift is beauty, and how powerful its influence, when strengthened by the rich eloquence of a spotless nature, beaming from beneath long-lashed lids, when two men like these, seared and hardened by the world’s ills – broken on the wheel of fortune – should feel a glow of long-forgotten gladness in their chilled hearts as they looked upon her? None could have guessed, however, what an effort that seeming light-heartedness cost her. Poor girl! Scarcely was she alone, and had closed the door of her room behind her, when she fell upon the bed in a torrent of tears, and sobbed as if her heart was breaking. All that Father Luke had said as they came along – and the kind old man had done his utmost to break the shock of the altered state of her uncle’s fortunes – was far from preparing her for the cold reality she witnessed. It was not the ruined walls, the treeless mountain, the desolate and dreary look of all around, that smote upon her heart; sad as these signs were, her grief had a higher source: it was the sight of that old man she called father, tottering feebly to the grave, surrounded by images of poverty and misfortune. It was the aspect of Mark, the cousin, she had pictured to her mind as an accomplished gentleman in look and demeanour; the descendant of a house more than noble – the heir of a vast property; and now she saw him, scarce in gesture and manner above the peasant – in dress, as slovenly and uncared for. She was prepared for a life of monotonous retirement and isolation. She was ready to face the long winter of dreary solitude – but not in such company as this. That she never calculated on. Her worst anticipations had never conjured up more than an unchequered existence, with little to vary or relieve it; and now, she foresaw a life to be passed amid the miserable straits and shifts of poverty, with all its petty incidents and lowering accidents, to lessen her esteem for those she wished to look up to and love. And this was Carrig-na-curra, the proud castle she had so often boasted of to her school companions, the baronial seat she had loved to exalt above the antique chateaux of France and Flanders; and these the haughty relatives, whose pride she mentioned as disdaining the alliance of the Saxon, and spurning all admixture of blood with a race less noble than their own. The very chamber she sat in, how did it contradict her own animated descriptions of its once comforts and luxuries! Alas! it seemed to be like duplicity and falsehood, that she had so spoken of these things. More than once she asked herself – “Were they always thus?” Poor child! she knew not that poverty can bring sickness, and sorrow and premature old age. It can devastate the fields, and desolate the affections, and make cold both heart and home together!

If want stopped short at privation, men need not to tremble at its approach. It is in the debasing and degrading influence of poverty its real terror lies. It is in the plastic facility with which the poor man shifts to meet the coming evil, that the high principle of rectitude is sacrificed, and the unflinching course of honour deviated from. When the proud three decker, in all the majesty of her might, may sail along her course unaltered, the humble craft, in the same sea, must tack, and beat, and watch for every casualty of the gale to gain her port in safety. These are the trials of the poor, but proud man. It is not the want of liveried lacqueys, of plate, of equipage, and all the glittering emblems of wealth, that smite his heart, and break his spirit. It is the petty subterfuge he is reduced to, that galls him – it is the sense of struggle between his circumstances and his conscience – between what he does, and what he feels.

It is true, Kate knew not these things, but yet she had before her the results of them too palpably to be mistaken. Sir Archibald was the only one on whom reverse of fortune had not brought carelessness and coarseness of manner. He seemed, both in dress and demeanour, little changed from what she remembered him years before; nor had time, apparently, fallen on him with heavier impress in other respects. What was Herbert like? was the question ever rising to her mind, but with little hope that the answer would prove satisfactory.

While Kate O’Donoghue was thus pondering over the characters of those with whom she was now to live, they, on the other hand, were exerting themselves to the utmost to restore some semblance of its ancient comfort to the long-neglected dwelling. A blazing fire of bog deal was lighted in the old hall, whose mellow glare glanced along the dark oak wainscot, and threw a rich glow along the corridor itself, to the very door of the tower. In the great chamber, where they sat, many articles of furniture, long disused and half forgotten, were now collected, giving, even by their number, a look of increased comfort to the roomy apartment. Nor were such articles of ornament as they possessed forgotten. The few pictures which had escaped the wreck of damp and time were placed upon the walls, and a small miniature of Kate, as a child – a poor performance enough – was hung up over the chimney, as it were to honour her, whose presence these humble preparations were made to celebrate. Sir Archy, too, as eager in these arrangements as Mark himself, had brought several books and illustrated volumes from his chamber to scatter upon the tables; while, as if for a shrine for the deity of the place, a little table of most elaborate marquetrie, and a richly-carved chair beside the fire, designated the place Kate was to occupy as her own, and to mark which, he had culled the very gems of his collection.

It is scarcely possible to conceive, how completely even a few trifling objects like these can change the “morale” of a chamber – how that, which before seemed cumbrous, sad, and dispiriting, becomes at once lightsome and pleasant-looking. But so it is: the things which speak of human thought and feeling appeal to a very different sense from those which merely minister to material comfort; and we accept the presence of a single book, a print, or drawing, as an evidence that mental aliment has not been forgotten.

If the changes here spoken of gave a very different air and seeming to the old tower, Kate’s own presence there completed the magic of the transformation. Dressed in black silk, and wearing a profusion of lace of the same colour – for her costume had been adapted to a very different sphere – she took her place in the family circle, diffusing around her a look of refinement and elegance, and making of that sombre chamber a spacious “salon.” Her guitar, her embroidery, her old-fashioned writing-desk, inlaid with silver, caught the eye as it wandered about the room, and told of womanly graces and accomplishments, so foreign to the rude emblems of the chase and the field, henceforth to be banished to the old entrance hall.

The O’Donoghue himself felt the influence of the young girl’s presence, and evidenced, in his altered dress and demeanour, the respect he desired to show; while Mark took from his scanty wardrobe the only garment he possessed above the rank of a shooting jacket, and entered the room with a half-bashful, half-sullen air, as though angry and ashamed with himself for even so much compliance with the world’s usages.

Although Kate was quick-sighted enough to see that these changes were caused on her account, her native tact prevented her from showing that knowledge, and made her receive their attentions with that happy blending of courtesy and familiarity, so fascinating from a young and pretty woman. The dinner – and it was a “chef-d’oeuvre” on the part of Mrs. Branagan – passed off most pleasantly. The fear her coming had excited now gave way to the delight her presence conferred. They felt as if they had done her an injustice in their judgment, and hastened to make every “amende” for their unfair opinion. Never, for years long, had the O’Donoghue been so happy. The cold and cheerless chamber was once more warmed into a home. The fire beside which he had so often brooded in sadness, was now the pleasant hearth, surrounded by cheery faces. Memories of the past, soothing through all their sorrow, flowed in upon his mind, as he sat and gazed at her in tranquil ecstacy. Sir Archibald, too, felt a return to his former self, in the tone of good breeding her presence diffused, and evinced, by the attentive politeness of his manner, how happy he was to recur once more to the observances which he remembered with so much affection, associated, as they were, with the brightest period of his life.

As for Mark, although less an actor than the others in the scene, the effect upon him was not less striking. All his assumed apathy gave way as he listened to her descriptions of foreign society, and the habits of those she had lived amongst. The ringing melody of her voice, the brilliant sparkle of her dark eyes, the graceful elegance of gesture – the French woman’s prerogative – threw over him their charm, a fascination never experienced before; and although a dark dread would now and then steal across his mind, How was a creature, beautiful and gifted like this, to lead the life of dreariness and gloom their days were passed in? – the tender feeling of affection she shewed his father, the fondness with which she dwelt on every little incident of her childhood – every little detail of the mountain scenery – showed a spirit which well might harmonise with a home, even humble as theirs, and pleasures as uncostly and as simple. “Oh! if she grow not weary of us!” was the heart-uttered sentence each moment as he listened; and, in the very anxiety of the doubt, the ecstacy of enjoyment was heightened. To purchase this boon, there was nothing he would not dare. To think that as he trod the glens, or followed the wild deer along some cragged and broken mountain gorge, a home like this ever awaited him, was a picture of happiness too bright and dazzling to look upon.

“Now, then, ‘ma belle.’” said Sir Archibald, as he rose from his seat, and, with an air of gallantry that might have done credit to Versailles of old, threw the ribbon of her guitar over her neck – “now for your promise – that little romance ye spoke of.”

“Willingly, dear uncle,” replied she, striking the chords as a kind of prelude. “Shall I sing you one of our convent hymns? – or will you have the romance?”

“It is no’ fair to tempt-one in a choice,” said M’Nab, slyly; “but sin’ ye say so, I must hear baith before I decide.”

“Your own favourite, the first,” said she, smiling, and began the little chanson of the “Garde Ecossaise,” the song of the exiled nobles in the service of France, so dear to every Scotchman’s heart.

While the melody described the gathering of the clans in the mountains, to take leave of their departing kinsmen, the measured tramp of the music, and the wild ringing of the pibroch, the old chieftain’s face lit up, and his eye glared with the fierce fire of native pride; but when the moment of leave-taking arrived, and the heart-rending cry of “Farewell!” broke from his deserted, the eye became glazed and filmy, and with a hand tremulous from emotion, he stopped the singer.

“Na, na, Kate; I canna bear that, the noo. Ye ha’e smote the rock too suddenly, lassie;” and the tears rolled heavily down his seared cheeks.