CHAPTER XXXI. THE LETTER-BAG
The package of letters was a large one, of all sizes. From all quarters they came – some from home; some from my brother officers of the Guards; some from the Castle; and even one from O’Grady.
The first I opened was a short note from Horton, the private secretary to the viceroy. This informed me that Major Mahon had written a statement to the duke of all the circumstances attending my duel; and that his grace had not only expressed himself highly satisfied with my conduct, but had ordered a very polite reply to be addressed to the Major, thanking him for his great kindness, and saying with what pleasure he found that a member of his staff had fallen into such good hands.
‘His grace desires me to add,’ continued the writer, ‘that you need only consult your own health and convenience with respect to your return to duty; and, in fact, your leave of absence is perfectly discretionary.’
My mind relieved of a weighty load by the contents of this letter, I recovered my strength already so far that I sat up in bed to peruse the others. My next was from my father; it ran thus: —
‘Dear Jack, – Your friend Major Mahon, to whom I write by this post, will deliver this letter to you when he deems fit. He has been most good-natured in conveying to me a narrative of your late doings; and I cannot express how grateful we all are to him for the truly friendly part he has taken towards you. After the strictest scrutiny, for I confess to you I feared lest the Major’s might be too partial an account, I rejoice to say that your conduct meets with my entire approbation. An older and a wiser head might, it is possible, have avoided some of the difficulties you have met with; but this I will add, that once in trouble, no one could have shown better temper or a more befitting spirit than you did. While I say this, my dear Jack, understand me clearly that I speak of you as a young, inexperienced man, thrown, at his very outset of life, not only among strangers, but in a country where, as I remarked to you at first, everything was different from those in your own. You have now shown yourself equal to any circumstances in which you may be placed. I therefore not only expect that you will meet with fewer embarrassments in future, but that, should they arise, I shall have the satisfaction of finding your character and your habits will be as much your safeguard against insult as your readiness to resent any will be sure and certain.
‘I have seen the duke several times, and he expresses himself as much pleased with you. From what he mentions, I can collect that you are well satisfied with Ireland, and therefore I do not wish to remove you from it. At the same time, bear in mind, that by active service alone can you ever attain to, or merit, rank in the army; and that hitherto you have only been a soldier by name.’
After some further words of advice respecting the future, and some few details of family matters, he concluded by entrusting to my mother the mention of what she herself professed to think lay more in her peculiar province.
As usual, her letter opened with some meteorological observations upon the climate of England for the preceding six weeks; then followed a journal of her own health, whose increasing delicacy, and the imperative necessity of being near Doctor Y – , rendered a journey to Ireland too dangerous to think of.
‘Yes, my dearest boy,’ wrote she, ‘nothing but this would keep me from you a moment; however, I am much relieved at learning that you are now rapidly recovering, and hope soon to hear of your return to Dublin. It is a very dreadful thing to think of, but perhaps, upon the whole, it is better that you did kill this Mr. Burke. De Grammont tells me that a mauvaise tête like that must be shot sooner or later. It makes me nervous to dwell on this odious topic, so that I shall pass on to something else.
‘The horrid little man that brought your letters, and who calls himself a servant of Captain O’Grady, insisted on seeing me yesterday. I never was more shocked in my life. From what he says, I gather that he may be looked on as rather a favourable specimen of the natives. They must indeed be a very frightful people; and although he assured me he would do me no injury, I made Thomas stay in the room the entire time, and told Chubbs to give the alarm to the police if he heard the slightest noise. The creature, however did nothing, and I have quite recovered from my fear already.
‘What a picture, my dear boy, did he present to me of your conduct and habits! Your intimacy with that odious family I mentioned in my last seems the root of all your misfortunes. Why will such people thrust themselves forward? What do they mean by inviting you to their frightful parties? Have they not their own peculiar horrors? – not but I must confess that they are more excusable than you; and I cannot conceive how you could so soon have forgotten the lessons instilled into you from your earliest years. As your poor dear grandfather, the admiral, used to say, a vulgar acquaintance is a shifting sand; you can never tell where you won’t meet it – always at the most inopportune moment; and then, if you remark, your underbred people are never content with a quiet recognition, but they must always indulge in a detestable cordiality there is no escaping from. Oh, John, John! when at ten years of age you made the banker’s son at Northampton hold your stirrup as you mounted your pony, I never thought I should have this reproach to make you.
‘The little fiend who calls himself Corny something, also mentions your continued familiarity with the young woman I spoke of before. What her intentions are is perfectly clear; and should she accomplish her object your position in society and future fortune might possibly procure her large damages; but pause, my dear boy, before you go any further. I do not speak of the moral features of the case, for you are of an age to judge of them yourself; but think, I beseech you, of the difficulties it will throw around your path in life, and the obstacles it will oppose to your success. There is poor Lord Henry Effingham; and since that foolish business with the clergyman’s wife or daughter, where somebody went mad, and some one else drowned or shot himself, they have never given him any appointment whatever. The world is a frightful and unforgiving thing, as poor Lord Henry knows; therefore beware!
‘The more I think of it, the more strongly do I feel the force of my first impressions respecting Ireland; and were it not that we so constantly hear of battles and bloodshed in the Peninsula, I should even prefer your being there. There would seem to be an unhappy destiny over everything belonging to me. My poor dear father, the admiral, had a life of hardship, almost unrewarded. For eleven years he commanded a guardship in the Nore; many a night have I seen him, when I was a little girl, come home dripping with wet, and perfectly insensible from the stimulants he was obliged to resort to, and be carried in that state to his bed; and after all this he didn’t get his blue ribbon till he was near sixty.
‘De Vere is constantly with us, and is, I remark, attentive to your cousin Julia. This is not of so much consequence, as I hear that her Chancery suit is taking an unhappy turn; should it be otherwise, your interests will, of course, be looked to. De Vere is most amusing, and has a great deal of wit; but for him and the Count we should be quite dreary, as the season is over, and we can’t leave town for at least three weeks. [The epistle concluded with a general summing up of its contents, and an affectionate entreaty to bear in mind her caution regarding the Rooneys.] Once more, my dear boy, remember that vulgar people are a part of our trials in this life. As that delightful man, the Dean of St. George’s, says, they are snares for our feet; and their subservient admiration of us is a dangerous and a subtle temptation. Read this letter again, and believe me, my dearest John, your affectionate and unhappy mother,
‘Charlotte Hinton.’
I shall not perform so undutiful a task as to play the critic on my excellent mother’s letter. There were, it is true, many new views of life presented to me by its perusal, and I should feel sadly puzzled were I to say at which I was more amused or shocked – at the strictness of her manners, or the laxity of her morals; but I confess that the part which most outraged me of all was the eulogy on Lord Dudley de Vere’s conversational gifts. But a few short months before, and it is possible I should not only have credited but concurred in the opinion; brief, however, as had been the interval, it had shown me much of life; it had brought me into acquaintance, and even intimacy, with some of the brightest spirits of the day; it had taught me to discriminate between the unmeaning jargon of conventional gossip and the charm of a society where force of reasoning, warmth of eloquence, and brilliancy of wit contested for the palm; it had made me feel that the intellectual gifts reserved in other countries for the personal advancement of their owner by their public and ostentatious display, can be made the ornament and the delight of the convivial board, the elegant accompaniment to the hours of happy intercourse, and the strongest bond of social union. So gradually had this change of opinion crept over me that I did not recognise in myself the conversion; and indeed had it not been for my mother’s observations on Lord Dudley, I could not have credited how far my convictions had gone round. I could now understand the measurement by which Irishmen were estimated in the London world. I could see that if such a character as De Vere had a reputation for ability, how totally impossible it was for those who appreciated him to prize the great and varied gifts of such men as Grattan and Curran, and many more.
Lost in such thoughts, I forgot for some moments that O’Grady’s letter lay open before me. It was dated Chatham, and written the night before he sailed. The first few lines showed me that he knew nothing of my duel, having only received my own letter with an account of the steeplechase. He wrote in high spirits. The Commander-in-chief had been most kind to him, appointing him to a vacant Majority – not, as he anticipated, in the Forty-first, but in the Ninth light Dragoons.
‘I am anxiously looking out for Corny,’ said he, ‘and a great letter-bag from Ireland – the only bit of news from which, except your own, is that the Rooneys have gone into deep mourning, themselves and their whole house. Various rumours are afloat as to whether any money speculations of Paul’s may have suggested the propriety of retrenchment, or whether there may not have been a death in the royal family of OToole. Look to this for me, Hinton; for even in Canada I shall preserve the memory of that capital house, its excellent cuisine, its charming hostess. Cultivate them, my dear Jack, for your sake and for mine. One Rembrandt is as good as a gallery; so sit down before them, and make a study of the family.’
The letter concluded as it began, by hearty thanks for the service I had rendered him, begging me to accept of Moddiridderoo as a souvenir of his friendship. And in a postscript, to write which the letter had evidently been reopened, was a warning to me against any chance collision with Ulick Burke.
‘Not, my dear boy, because he is a dead shot – although that same is something – but that a quarrel with him could scarcely be reputable in its commencement, and must be bad whatever the result.’
After some further cautioning on this matter, the justice of which was tolerably evident from my own experience, O’Grady concluded with a hurried postscript: —
‘Corny has not yet arrived, and we have received our orders for embarkation within twenty-four hours. I begin half to despair of his being here in time. Should this be the case, will you, my dear Hinton, look after the old villain for me, at least until I write to you again on the subject?’
While I was yet pondering on these last few lines, I perceived that a card had fallen from my father’s letter. I took it up, and what was my astonishment to find that it contained a correct likeness of Corny Delany, drawn with a pen, underneath which was written, in my cousin Julia’s hand, the following few lines: —
‘The dear old thing has waited three days, and I think I have at length caught something like him. Dear Jack, if the master be only equal to the man, we shall never forgive you for not letting us see him. – Yours, Julia.’
This, of course, explained the secret of Corny’s delay – my cousin, with her habitual wilfulness, preferring the indulgence of a caprice to anything resembling a duty; and I now had little doubt upon my mind that O’Grady’s fears were well founded, and that he had been obliged to sail without his follower.
The exertion it cost me to read my letters, and the excitement produced by their perusal, fatigued and exhausted me, and as I sank back upon my pillow I closed my eyes and fell sound asleep, not to wake until late on the following day. But strange enough, when I did so, it was with a head clear and faculties collected, my mind refreshed by rest unbroken by a single dream; and so restored did I feel, that, save in the debility from long confinement to bed, I was unconscious of any sense of malady.
From this hour my recovery dated. Advancing every day with rapid steps, my strength increased; and before a week elapsed, I so far regained my lost health that I could move about my chamber, and even lay plans for my departure.
CHAPTER XXXII. BOB MAHON AND THE WIDOW
It was about eight or ten days after the events I have mentioned, when Father Tom Loftus, whose care and attention to me had been unceasing throughout, came in to inform me that all the preparations for our journey were properly made, and that by the following morning at sunrise we should be on the road.
I confess that I looked forward to my departure with anxiety. The dreary monotony of each day, spent either in perambulating my little room or in a short walk up and down before the inn door, had done more to depress and dispirit me than even the previous illness. The good priest, it is true, came often to see me; but then there were hours spent quite alone, without the solace of a book or the sight of even a newspaper. I knew the face of every man, woman, and child in the village; I could tell their haunts, their habits, and their occupations. Even the very hours of the tedious day were marked in my mind by various little incidents, that seemed to recur with unbroken precision; and if when the pale apothecary disappeared from over the half-door of his shop I knew that he was engaged at his one o’clock dinner, so the clink of the old ladies’ pattens, as they passed to an evening tea, told me that the day was waning, when the town-clock should strike seven. There was nothing to break the monotonous jog-trot of daily life save the appearance of a few raw subalterns, who, from some cause or other, less noticed than others of the regiment by the neighbouring gentry, strolled about the town, quizzing and laughing at the humble townsfolk, and endeavouring, by looks of most questionable gallantry, to impress the female population with a sense of their merits.
After all, mankind is pretty much the same in every country and every age – some men ambitioning the credit of virtues the very garb of which they know not; others, and a large class too, seeking for the reputation of vices the world palliates with the appellation of ‘fashionable.’ We laugh at the old courtier of Louis xiv.‘s time, who in the flattery of the age he lived in preferred being called a scélérat, an infâme scélérat, that by the excesses he professed the vicious habits of the sovereign might seem less striking; and yet we see the very same thing under our own eyes every day we live.
But to return. There was nothing to delay me longer at Loughrea. Poor Joe was so nearly recovered that in a few days more it was hoped he might leave his bed. He was in kind hands, however, and I had taken every precaution that he should want for nothing in my absence. I listened, then, with pleasure to Father Tom’s detail of all his preparations; and although I knew not whither we were going, nor how long the journey was likely to prove, yet I looked forward to it with pleasure, and only longed for the hour of setting out.
As the evening drew near, I looked anxiously out for the good father’s arrival. He had promised to come in early with Major Mahon, whom I had not seen for the two days previous – the Major being deeply engaged in consultations with his lawyer regarding an approaching trial at the assizes. Although I could gather from his manner, as well as from the priest’s, that something of moment impended, yet as neither of them more than alluded to the circumstance, I knew nothing of what was going forward.
It was eight o’clock when Father Tom made his appearance. He came alone, and by his flurried look and excited manner I saw there was something wrong.
‘What is it, father?’ said I. ‘Where is the Major?’
‘Och, confound him! they have taken him at last,’ said he, wiping his forehead with agitation.
‘Taken him!’ said I. ‘Why, was he hiding?’
‘Hiding! to be sure he was hiding, and masquerading and disguising himself! But, ‘faith, those Clare fellows, there’s no coming up to them; they have such practice in their own county, they would take the devil himself if there was a writ out against him. And, to be sure, it was a clever trick they played old Bob.’
Here the good priest took such a fit of laughing that he was obliged to wipe his eyes.
‘May I never,’ said he, ‘if it wasn’t a good turn they played him, after what he did himself!’
‘Come, father, let’s hear it.’
‘This was the way of it. Maybe you never remarked – of course you didn’t, for you were only up there a couple of times – that opposite Bob’s lodgings there was a mighty sweet-looking crayture, a widow-woman; she was dressed in very discreet black, and had a sorrowful look about her that somehow or other, I think, made her even more interesting.
‘“I’d like to know that widow,” said Bob; “for now that the fellows have a warrant against me, I could spend my days so pleasantly over there, comforting and consoling her.”
‘“Whisht,” said I, “don’t you see that she is in grief?”
‘“Not so much in grief,” said he, “but she lets down two beautiful braids of her brown hair under her widow’s cap; and whenever you see that, Father Tom, take my word for it, the game’s not up.”
‘I believe there was some reason in what he said, for the last time I went up to see him he had the window open, and he was playing “Planxty Kelly” with all his might on an old fiddle; and the widow would come now and then to the window to draw the little muslin curtain, or she would open it to give a halfpenny to the beggars, or she would hold out her hand to see if it was raining – and a beautiful lily-white hand it was; but all the time, you see, it was only exchanging looks they were. Bob was a little ashamed when he saw me in the room, but he soon recovered.
‘“A very charming woman that Mrs. Moriarty is,” said he, closing the window. “It ‘s a cruel pity that her fortune is all in the Grand Canal – I mean Canal debentures. But indeed it comes pretty much to the same thing.”
‘And so he went on raving about the widow; for by this time he knew all about her. Her maiden name was Cassidy, and her father a distiller; and, in fact, Bob was quite delighted with his beautiful neighbour. At last I bid him good-bye, promising to call for him at eight o’clock to come over here to you; for you see there was a backdoor to the house that led into a small alley, by which Mahon used to make his escape in the evening. He was sitting, it seems, at his window, looking out for the widow, who for some cause or other hadn’t made her appearance the entire of the day. There he sat with his hand on his heart, and a heavenly smile upon him for a good hour, sipping a little whisky-and-water between times, to keep up his courage.
‘“She must be out,” said Bob to himself. “She ‘s gone to pass the day somewhere. I hope she doesn’t know any of these impudent vagabonds up at the barracks. Maybe, after all, it’s sick she is.”
‘While he was ruminating this way, who should he see turn the corner but the widow herself. There she was, coming along in deep weeds, with her maid after her – a fine slashing-looking figure, rather taller than her though, and lustier every way; but it was the first time he saw her in the streets. As she got near to her door, Bob stood up to make a polite bow. Just as he did so, the widow slipped her foot, and fell down on the flags with a loud scream. The maid ran up, endeavouring to assist her, but she couldn’t stir; and as she placed her hand on her leg, Bob perceived at once she had sprained her ankle. Without waiting for his hat, he sprang downstairs, and rushed across the street. ‘“Mrs. Moriarty, my angel!” said Bob, putting his arm round her waist. “Won’t you permit me to assist you?”
‘She clasped his hand with fervent gratitude, while the maid, putting her hand into her reticule, seemed fumbling for a handkerchief.
‘“I am a stranger to you, ma’am,” said Bob; “but if Major Mahon, of the Roscommon – ”
‘“The very man we want!” said the maid, pulling a writ out of the reticule; for a devil a thing else they were but two bailiffs from Ennis.
‘“The very man we want!” said the bailiffs.
‘“I am caught!” said Bob.
‘“The devil a doubt of it!”
‘At the same moment the window opened overhead, and the beautiful widow looked out to see what was the matter.
‘“Good-evening to you, ma’am,” says Bob; “and I ‘d like to pay my respects if I wasn’t particularly engaged to these ladies here.” And with that he gave an arm to each of them and led them down the street, as if it was his mother and sister.’
‘The poor Major!’ said I. ‘And where is he now?‘’ On his way to Ennis in a post-chaise; for it seems the ladies had a hundred pounds for their capture. Ah, poor Bob! But there is no use fretting; besides it would be sympathy thrown away, for he ‘ll give them the slip before long. And now, Captain, are you ready for the road? I have got a peremptory letter from the bishop, and must be back in Murranakilty as soon as I can.’
‘My dear father, I am at your disposal I believe we can do no more for poor Joe; and as to Mr. Burke – and, by-the-bye, how is he?’
‘Getting better, they say. But I believe you’ve spoiled a very lucrative source of his income. He was the best jumper in the west of Ireland; and they tell me you’ve lamed him for life. He is down at Milltown, or Kilkee, or somewhere on the coast; but sure well have time enough to talk of these things as we go along. I’ll be with you by seven o’clock. We must start early, and get to Portumna before night.’
Having promised implicit obedience to the worthy priest’s directions, be they what they might, I pledged myself to make up my luggage in the smallest possible space, and have breakfast ready for him before starting. After a few other observations and some suggestions as to the kind of equipment he deemed suitable to the road, he took his leave, and I sat down alone to a little quiet reckoning with myself as to the past, the present, and the future.
From my short experience of Ireland, the only thing approaching to an abstract principle I could attain to was the utter vanity, the perfect impossibility, of any man’s determining on a given line of action or the steady pursuit of any one enterprise. No; the inevitable course of fate seems to have chosen this happy island to exhibit its phenomena. Whether your days be passed in love or war, or your evenings in drink or devotion, not yours be the glory; for there would seem to be a kind of headlong influence at work, impelling you ever forward. Acquaintances grow up, ripen, and even bear fruit before in other lands their roots would have caught the earth; by them your tastes are regulated, your habits controlled, your actions fashioned. You may not, it is true, lisp in the patois of blarney; you may weed your phraseology of its tropes and figures; but trust me, that if you live in Ireland, if you like the people (and who does not?), and if you are liked by them (and who would not be?), then do I say you will find yourself, without knowing or perceiving it, going the pace with the natives – courtship, fun, frolic, and devilment filling up every hour of your day, and no inconsiderable portion of your night also. One grand feature of the country seemed to me, that, no matter what particular extravagance you were addicted to, no matter what strange or absurd passion to do or seem something remarkable, you were certain of always finding some one to sympathise with if not actually to follow you. Nothing is too strange, nothing too ridiculous, nothing too convivial, nothing too daring for Paddy. With one intuitive bound he springs into your confidence and enters into your plans. Only be open with him, conceal nothing, and he’s yours heart and hand; ready to endorse your bill, to carry off a young lady, or carry a message; to burn a house for a joke, or jeopardy his neck for mere pastime; to go to the world’s end to serve you, and on his return shoot you afterwards out of downright good-nature.
As for myself, I might have lived in England to the age of Methuselah, and yet never have seen as much of life as in the few months spent in Ireland. Society in other lands seems a kind of free-masonry, where for lack of every real or important secret men substitute signs and passwords, as if to throw the charm of mystery where, after all, nothing lies concealed; but in Ireland, where national character runs in a deep or hidden channel, with cross currents and backwater ever turning and winding – where all the incongruous and discordant elements of what is best and worst seem blended together – there, social intercourse is free, cordial, warm, and benevolent. Men come together disposed to like one another; and what an Irishman is disposed to, he usually has a way of effecting. My brief career had not been without its troubles; but who would not have incurred such, or as many more, to have evoked such kind interest and such warm friendship? From Phil O’Grady, my first, to Father Tom, my last friend, I had met with nothing but almost brotherly affection; and yet I could not help acknowledging to myself, that, but six short months before, I would have recoiled from the friendship of the one and the acquaintance of the other, as something to lower and degrade me. Not only would the outward observances of their manner have deterred me, but in their very warm and earnest proffers of good-nature, I would have seen cause for suspecting and avoiding them. Thank Heaven! I now knew better, and felt deeper. How this revolution became effected in me I am not myself aware. Perhaps – I only say perhaps – Miss Bellew had a share in effecting it.
Such were some of my thoughts as I betook myself to bed, and soon after to sleep.