The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

“Bring some supper here directly,” cried O’Donoghue, striking the ground angrily with his heavy cane; “if I have to tell you again, I hope he’ll break every bone in your skin.”

“I request you will not order any refreshment for me, sir,” said Talbot, bowing; “we partook of a very excellent supper at a little cabin in the glen, where, among other advantages, I had the pleasure of making your son’s acquaintance.”

“Ah, indeed, at Mary’s,” said the old man. “There are worse places than that little ‘shebeen;’ but you must permit me to offer you a glass of claret, which never tastes the worse in company with a grouse pie.

“You must hae found the travelling somewhat rude in these parts,” said M’Nab, who thus endeavoured to draw from the stranger some hint either as to the object or the road of his journey.

“We were not over particular on that score,” said Talbot, laughing. “A few young college men seeking some days’ amusement in the wild mountains of this picturesque district, could well afford to rough it for the enjoyment of the ramble.”

“You should visit us in the autumn,” said O’Donoghue, “when our heaths and arbutus blossoms are in beauty; then, they who have travelled far, tell me that there is nothing to be seen in Switzerland finer than this valley. Draw your chair over here, and let me have the pleasure of a glass of wine with you.”

The party had scarcely taken their places at the table, when Mark re-entered the room, heated and excited with the chase of the fugitives.

“They’re off,” muttered he, angrily, “down the glen, and I only hope they may lose their way in it, and spend the night upon the heather.”

As he spoke, he turned his eyes to the corner of the room, where Kerry, in a state of the most abject fear, was endeavouring to extract a cork from a bottle by means of a very impracticable screw.

“Ah! you there,” cried he, as his eyes flashed fire. “Hold the bottle up – hold it steady, you old fool,” and with a savage grin he drew a pistol from his breast pocket and levelled it at the mark.

Kerry was on his knees, one hand on the floor and in the other the bottle, which, despite all his efforts, he swayed backwards and forwards.

“O master, darlin’ – O Sir Archy, dear – O Joseph and Mary!”

“I’ve drank too much wine to hit it flying,” said Mark, with a half drunken laugh, “and the fool won’t be steady. There;” and as he spoke, the crash of the report resounded through the room, and the neck of the bottle was snapped off about half an inch below the cork.

“Neatly done, Mark – not a doubt of it,” said the O’Donoghue, as he took the bottle from Kerry’s hand, who, with a pace a kangaroo might have envied, approached the table, actually dreading to stand up straight in Mark’s presence.

“At the risk of being thought an epicure,” said M’Nab, “I maun say I’d like my wine handled more tenderly.”

“It was cleverly done though,” said Talbot, helping himself to a bumper from the broken flask. “I remember a trick we used to have at St. Cyr, which was, to place a bullet on a cork, and then, at fifteen paces cut away the cork and drop the bullet into the bottle.”

“No man ever did that twice,” cried Mark, rudely.

“I’ll wager a hundred guineas I do it twice, within five shots,” said Talbot, with the most perfect coolness.

“Done, for a hundred – I say done,” said Mark, slapping him familiarly on the shoulder.

“I’ll not win your money on such unfair terms,” said Talbot, laughing, “and if I can refrain from taking too much of this excellent Bourdeaux, I’ll do the trick to-morrow without a wager.”

Mark, like most persons who place great store by feats of skill and address, felt vexed at the superiority claimed by another, answered carelessly, “that, after all, perhaps the thing were easier than it seemed.”

“Very true,” chimed in Talbot, mildly; “what we have neither done ourselves nor seen done by another, has always the appearance of difficulty. What is called wisdom is little other than the power of calculating success or failure on grounds of mere probability.

“Your definition has the advantage of being sufficient for the occasion,” said Sir Archy, smiling. “I am happy to find our glen has not disappointed you; but if you have not seen the Lake and the Bay of Glengariff, I anticipate even a higher praise from you.”

“We spent the day on the water,” replied Talbot; “and if it were not a heresy, I should affirm, that these bold mountains are grander and more sublime in the desolation of winter, than even when clothed in the purple and gold of summer. There was a fine sea, too, rolling into that great Bay, bounding upon the rocks, and swelling proudly against the tall cliffs, which, to my eye, is more pleasurable than the glassy surface of calm water. Motion is the life of inanimate objects, and life has always its own powers of excitement.”

While they conversed thus, M’Nab, endeavouring, by adroit allusions to the place, to divine the real reason of the visit, and Talbot, by encomiums on the scenery, or, occasionally, by the expression of some abstract proposition, seeking to avoid any direct interrogatory – Mark, who had grown weary of a dialogue which, even in his clearer moments, would not have interested him, drank deeply from the wine before him, filling and re-filling a large glass unceasingly, while the O’Donoghue merely paid that degree of attention which politeness demanded.

It was thus that, while Sir Archy believed he was pushing Talbot closely on the objects of his coming, Talbot was, in reality, obtaining from him much information about the country generally, the habits of the people, and their modes of life, which he effected in the easy, unconstrained manner of one perfectly calm and unconcerned. “The life of a fisherman,” said he, in reply to a remark of Sir Archy’s – “the life of a fisherman is, however, a poor one; for though his gains are great, at certain seasons, there are days – ay, whole months, he cannot venture out to sea. Now it strikes me, that in that very Bay of Bantry the swell must be terrific, when the wind blows from the west, or the nor’-west.”

“You are right – quite right,” answered M’Nab, who at once entered freely into a discussion of the condition of the Bay, under the various changing circumstances of wind and tide. “Many of our poor fellows have been lost within my own memory, and, indeed, save when we have an easterly wind – ”

“An easterly wind?” re-echoed Mark, lifting his head suddenly from between his hands, and staring in half-drunken astonishment around him. “Is that the toast – did you say that?”

“With all my heart,” said Sir Archy, smiling. “There are few sentiments deserve a bumper better, by any who live in these parts. Won’t you join us, Mr. Talbot?”

“Of course I will,” said Talbot, laughing, but with all his efforts to seem at ease, a quick observer might have remarked the look of warning he threw towards the young O’Donoghue.

“Here, then,” cried Mark, rising, while the wine trickled over his hand from a brimming goblet – “I’ll give it – are you ready?”

“All ready, Mark,” said the O’Donoghue, laughing heartily at the serious gravity of Mark’s countenance.

“Confound it,” cried the youth, passionately; “I forget the jingle.”

“Never mind – never mind,” interposed Talbot, slily; “we’ll pledge it with as good a mind.”

“That’s – that’s it,” shouted Mark, as the last word clinked upon his memory. “I have it now,” and his eyes sparkled, and his brows were met, as he called out —

“A stout heart and mind,And an easterly wind,And the devil behind The Saxon.”

Sir Archy laid down his glass untasted, while Talbot, bursting forth into a well-acted laugh, cried out, “You must excuse me from repeating your amiable sentiment, which, for aught I can guess, may be a sarcasm on my own country.”

“I’d like to hear the same toast explained,” said Sir Archy, cautiously, while his looks wandered alternately from Mark to Talbot.

“So you shall, then,” replied Mark, sternly, “and this very moment too.”

“Come, that’s fair,” chimed in Talbot, while he fixed his eyes on the youth, with such a steady gaze as seemed actually to have pierced the dull vapour of his clouded intellect, and flashed light upon his addled brain. “Let us hear your explanation.”

Mark, for a second or two, looked like one suddenly awakened from a deep sleep, and trying to collect his wandering faculties, while, as if instinctively seeking the clue to his bewilderment from Talbot, he never turned his eyes from him. As he sat thus, he looked the very ideal of half-drunken stupidity.

“I’m afraid we have no right to ask the explanation,” whispered Talbot into M’Nab’s ear. “We ought to be satisfied, if he give us the rhyme, even though he forgot the reason.”

“I’m thinking you’re right, sir,” replied M’Nab; “but I suspect we hae na the poet before us, ony mair than the interpreter.”

Mark’s faculties, in slow pursuit of Talbot’s meaning, had just at this instant overtaken their object, and he burst forth into a boisterous fit of laughter, which, whatever sentiment it might have excited in the others, relieved Talbot, at least, from all his former embarrassment: he saw that Mark had, though late, recognised his warning, and was at once relieved from any uneasiness on the score of his imprudence.

Sir Archy was, however, very far from feeling satisfied. What he had heard, brief and broken as it was, but served to excite his suspicions, and make him regard this guest as at least a very doubtful character. Too shrewd a diplomatist to push his inquiries any further, he adroitly turned the conversation upon matters of comparative indifference, reserving to himself the part of acutely watching Talbot’s manner, and narrowly scrutinizing the extent of his acquaintance with Mark O’Donoghue. In whatever school Talbot had been taught, his skill was more than a match for Sir Archy’s. Not only did he at once detect the meaning of the old man’s policy; but he contrived to make it subservient to his own views, by the opportunity it afforded him of estimating the influence he was capable of exerting over his nephew; and how far, if need were, Mark should become dependent on his will, rather than on that of any member of his own family. The frankness of his manner, the seeming openness of his nature, rendered his task a matter of apparent amusement; and none at the table looked in every respect more at ease than Harry Talbot.

While Sir Archy was thus endeavouring, with such skill as he possessed, to worm out the secret reason – and such, he well knew, there must be – of Talbot’s visit to that unfrequented region, Kerry O’Leary was speculating, with all his imaginative ability, how best to account for that event. The occasion was one of more than ordinary difficulty. Talbot looked neither like a bailiff nor a sheriffs officer; neither had he outward signs of a lawyer or an attorney. Kerry was conversant with the traits of each of these. If he were a suitor for Miss Kate, his last guess, he was a day too late.

“But sure he couldn’t be that: he’d never come with a throop of noisy vagabonds, in the dead of the night, av he was after the young lady. Well, well, he bates me out – sorra lie in it,” said he, drawing a heavy sigh, and crossing his hands before him in sad resignation.

“On my conscience, then, it was a charity to cut your hair for you, anyhow!” said Mrs. Branagan, who had been calmly meditating on the pistol-shot, which, in grazing Kerry’s hair, had somewhat damaged his locks.

“See, then – by the holy mass! av he went half an inch lower, it’s my life he’d be after taking; and if he was fifty O’Donoghues, I’d have my vingince. Bad cess to me, but they think the likes of me isn’t fit to live at all.”

“They do,” responded Mrs. Branagan, with a mild puff of smoke from the corner of her mouth – “they do; and if they never did worse than extarminate such varmin, their sowls would have an easier time of it.”

Kerry’s brow lowered, and his lips muttered; but no distinct reply was audible.

“Sorra bit of good I see in ye at all,” said she, with inexorable severity. “I mind the time ye used to tell a body what was doing above stairs; and, though half what ye said was lies, it was better than nothing: but now yer as stupid and lazy as the ould beast there fornint the fire – not a word out of yer head from morning to night. Ayeh, is it your hearin’s failin’ ye?”

“I wish to the Blessed Mother it was,” muttered he fervently to himself.

“There’s a man now eatin’ and drinkin’ in the parlour, and the sorra more ye know about him, than if he was the Queen of Sheba.”

“Don’t I, thin – maybe not,” said Kerry, tauntingly, and with a look of such well-affected secrecy, that Mrs. Branagan was completely deceived by it.

“What is he, then? spake it out free this minit,” said she. “Bad cess to you, do you want to trate me like an informer.”

“No, indeed, Mrs. Branagan; its not that same I’d even to you – sure I knew your people – father and mother’s side – two generations back. Miles Buoy – yallow Miles, as they called him – was the finest judge of a horse in Kerry – I wonder now he didn’t make a power of money.”

“And so he did, and spint it after. ‘Twas blackguards, with ould gaiters, and one spur on them, that ate up every shilling he saved.”

“Well, well! think of that, now,” said Kerry, with the sententious-ness of one revolving some strange and curious social anomaly; “and that’s the way it wint.”

“Wasn’t it a likely way enough,” said Mrs. Branagan, with flashing eyes, “feedin’ a set of spalpeens that thought of nothing but chating the world. The sight of a pair of top hoots gives me the heartburn to this day.”

“Mine warms to them, too,” said Kerry, timidly, who ventured on his humble pun with deep humility.

A contemptuous scowl was Mrs. Branagan’s reply, and Kerry resumed.

“Them’s the changes of world – rich yesterday – poor to-day! Don’t I know what poverty is well myself. Augh! sure enough they wor the fine times, when I rode out on a beast worth eighty guineas in goold, wid clothes on my back a lord might envy; and now, look at me!”

Mrs. Branagan, to whom the rhetorical figure seemed a direct appeal, did look; and assuredly the inspection conveyed nothing flattering, for she turned away abruptly, and smoked her pipe with an air of profound disdain.

“Faix ye may say so,” continued Kerry, converting her glance into words. “‘Tis a poor object I am this blessed day. The coat on my back is more like a transparency, and my small clothes, saving your favour, is as hard to get into as a fishing-net; and if I was training for the coorse, I couldn’t be on shorter allowance.”. “What’s that yer saying about yer vittals?” said the cook, turning fiercely towards him. “There’s not your equal for an appetite from this to Cork. It’s little time a Kerry cow would keep you in beef; and it’s an ill skin it goes into. Yer a disgrace to a good family.”

“Well, I am, and there’s no denying it!” ejaculated Kerry, with a sigh that sounded far more like despair than resignation.

“Is it to hang yourself you have that piece of a rope there?” said she, pointing to the end of a stout cord that depended from Kerry’s pocket.

“Maybe it might come to that same yet,” said he, and then putting his hand into his pocket, he drew forth a great coil of rope, to the end of which a leaden weight was fastened. “There, now,” resumed he, “Yer a cute woman – can ye tell me what’s the meanin of that?”

Mrs. Branagan gave one look at the object in question, and then turned away, as though the enquiry was one beneath her dignity to investigate.

“Some would call it a clothes-line, and more would say it was for fishing; but sure there’s no sign of hooks on it at all; and what’s the piece of lead for? – that’s what bothers me out entirely.” These observations were so many devices to induce Mrs. Branagan to offer her own speculations; but they failed utterly – that sage personage not deigning to pay the least attention either to Kerry or the subject of his remarks.

“Well, I’ll just leave it where I found it,” said he, in a half soliloquy, but which had the effect of at least arousing the curiosity of his companion.

“And where was that?” asked she.

“Outside there, before the hall door,” said he, carelessly, “where I got this little paper book too,” and he produced a small pocket almanack, with blank pages interleaved, some of which had short pencil memoranda. “I’ll leave them both there, for, somehow, I don’t like the look of either of them.”

“Read us a bit of it first, anyhow,” said Mrs. Branagan, in a more conciliating tone than she had yet employed.

“‘Tis what I can’t do, then,” said Kerry; “for it’s writ in some outlandish tongue that’s past me altogether.”

“And you found them at the door, ye say?”

“Out there fornint the tower. ‘Twas the chaps that run away from Master Mark that dropped them. Ye’r a dhroll bit of a rope as ever I seen,” added he, as he poised the lead in his hand, “av a body knew only what to make of ye:” then turning to the book, he pored for several minutes over a page, in which there were some lines written with a pencil. “Be my conscience I have it,” said he, at length; “and faix it wasn’t bad of me to make it out. What do you think, now, the rope is for?”

“Sure I tould you afore I didn’t know.”

“Well, then, hear it, and no lie in it – ‘tis for measurin’ the say.”

“Measurin’ the say! What bother you’re talking; isn’t the say thousands and thousands of miles long.”

“And who says it isn’t? – but for measurin’ the depth of it, that’s what it is. Listen to this – ‘Bantry Bay, eleven fathoms at low water inside of Whiddy Island; but the shore current at half ebb makes landing difficult with any wind from the westward;’ and here’s another piece, half rubbed out, about flat-bottomed boats being best for the surf.”

“‘Tis the smugglers again,” chimed in Mrs. Branagan, as though summing up her opinion on the evidence.

“Troth, then, I don’t think so; they never found it hard to land, no matter how it blew. I’m thinking of a way to find it out at last.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’ll just go up to the parlour, wid an innocent face on me, and I’ll lay the rope and the little book down on the table before the strange man there; and I’ll just say, ‘There’s the things your honour dropped at the door outside;’ and maybe ould Archy won’t have the saycrct out of him.”

“Do that, Kerry avich,” said Mrs. Branagan, who at length vouchsafed a hearty approval of his skill in devices. “Do that, and I’ll broil a bit o’ meat for ye agin ye come down.”

“Wid an onion on it, av it’s plazing to ye, ma’am,” said Kerry, insinuatingly.

“Sure I know how ye like it; and if ye have the whole of the say-cret, maybe you’d get a dhrop to wash it down besides.

“And wish you health and happy days, Mrs. Branagan,” added Kerry, with a courteous gallantry he always reserved for the kitchen; so saying, he arose from his chair, and proceeded to arrange his dress in a manner becoming the dignity of his new mission, rehearsing at the same time the mode of his entry.

“‘Tis the rope and the little book, your honour, I’ll say, that ye dropped outside there, and sure it would be a pity to lose it, afther all your trouble measuring the places. That will be enough for ould Archy; let him get a sniff of the game once, and begorra he’ll run him home by himself afterwards.”

With this sensible reflection, Kerry ascended the stairs in high good humour at his own sagacity, and the excellent reward which awaited it on his return. As he neared the door, the voices were loud and boisterous; at least Mark’s was such; and it seemed as if Talbot was endeavouring to moderate the violent tone in which he spoke, and successfully, too; for a loud burst of laughter followed, in which Talbot appeared to join heartily.

“Maybe I’ll spoil your fun,” said Kerry, maliciously, to himself, and he opened the door, and entered.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CAPITAL AND ITS PLEASURES

Dublin, at the time we speak of, possessed social attractions of a high order. Rank, beauty, intellect, and wealth, contributed their several influences; and while the tone of society had all the charms of a politeness now bygone, there was an admixture of native kindliness and cordiality, as distinctive as it was fascinating.

Almost every Irishman of rank travelled in those days. It was regarded as the last finishing-touch of education, and few nations possess quicker powers of imitation, or a greater aptitude in adapting foreign habitudes to home usages, than the Irish; for, while vanity with the Frenchman – coldness with the Englishman – and stolid indifference with the German, are insuperable barriers against this acquirement; the natural gaiety of Irish character, the buoyancy, but still more than all, perhaps, the inherent desire to please, suggest a quality, which, when cultivated and improved, becomes that great element of social success – the most precious of all drawing-room gifts – men call tact.

It would be a most unfair criterion of the tastes and pleasures of that day, were we to pronounce, from our experience of what Dublin now is. Provincialism had not then settled down upon the city, with all its petty attendant evils. The character of a metropolis was upheld by a splendid Court, a resident Parliament, a great and titled aristocracy. The foreground figures of the time were men whose names stood high, and whose station was recognized at every Court of Europe. There was wealth more than proportioned to the cheapness of the country; and while ability and talent were the most striking features of every circle, the taste for gorgeous display exhibited within doors and without, threw a glare of splendour over the scene, that served to illustrate, but not eclipse the prouder glories of mind. The comparative narrowness of the circle, and the total absence of English reserve, produced a more intimate admixture of all the ranks which constitute good society here than in London, and the advantages were evident; for while the aristocrat gained immeasurably, from ready intercourse with men whose pursuits were purely intellectual, so the latter acquired a greater expansiveness, and a wider liberality in his views, from being divested of all the trammels of mere professional habit, and threw off his pedantry, as a garment unsuited to his position in society. But what more than all else was the characteristic of the time, was the fact, that social eminence – the “succès de salon” – was an object to every one. From the proud peer, who aspired to rank and influence in the councils of the state, to the rising barrister, ambitious of parliamentary distinction – from the mere fashionable idler of the squares, to the deep plotter of political intrigue – this was alike indispensable. The mere admission into certain circles was nothing – the fact of mixing with the hundred others who are announced, and bow, and smile, and slip away, did not then serve to identify a man as belonging to a distinct class in society; nor would the easy platitudes of the present day, in which the fool or the fop can always have the ascendant, suffice for the absence of conversational ability, ready wit, and sharp intelligence, which were assembled around every dinner-table of the capital.

It is not our duty, still less our inclination, to inquire why have all these goodly attractions left us, nor wherefore is it, that, Uke the art of staining glass, social agreeability should be lost for ever. So it would seem, however; we have fallen upon tiresome times, and he who is old enough to remember pleasanter ones, has the sad solace of knowing that he has seen the last of them.

Crowded as the capital was, with rank, wealth, and influence, the arrival of Sir Marmaduke Travers was not without its “eclat.” His vast fortune was generally known; besides that, there was a singularity in the fact of an Englishman, bound to Ireland by the very slender tie of a small estate, without connexions or friends in the country, coming to reside in Dublin, which gratified native pride as much as it excited public curiosity; and the rapidity with which the most splendid mansion in Stephen’s-green was prepared for his reception, vied in interest with the speculation, as to what possible cause had induced him to come and live there. The rumours of his intended magnificence, and the splendour of his equipage, furnished gossip for the town, and paragraphs for the papers.

It was, indeed, a wondrous change for those two young girls – from the stillness and solitude of Glenflesk, to the gaiety of the capital – from a life of reflection and retirement, to the dazzling scenes and fascinating pleasures of a new world. Upon Sybella the first effect was to increase her natural timidity – to render her more cautious, as she found herself surrounded by influences so novel and so strange; and in this wise there was mingled with her enjoyment, a sense of hesitation and fear, that tinged all her thoughts, and even impressed themselves upon her manner. Not so with Kate: the instinct that made her feel at home in the world, was but the consciousness of her own powers of pleasing. She loved society as the scene, where, however glossed over by conventionalities, human passions and feelings were at work, and where the power of influencing or directing others gave a stimulus to existence, far higher and nobler than all the pleasures of retirement. It was life, in fact. Each day had its own separate interests, dramatizing, as it were, the real, and making of the ordinary events of the world a romance, of which she felt herself a character. As much an actor as spectator, she threw herself into the pleasures of society with a zest which need only have the accompaniments of youth, beauty, and talents, to make it contagious. Thus differing in character, as in appearance, these two young girls at once became the acknowledged beauties of the capital, and each was followed by a troop of admirers, whose enthusiasm exhibited itself in a hundred different ways. Their favourite colours at a ball became the fashionable emblems of the next day on the promenade, and even the ladies caught up the contagion, and enlisted themselves into parties, whose rivalry amused none so much as those, in whom it had its origin.