The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

“It is for that he’s come here, I’ve no doubt,” resumed Mark; “he only waited to have the whole estate in his possession, which this term will give him.”

“I wish he had waited a little longer – a year, or at most, two, would have been enough,” said the old man, in a voice of great dejection, then added, with a sickly smile – “You have little affection for the old walls, Mark.”

The youth made no reply, and he went on – “Nor is it to be wondered at. You never knew them in their happy days! but I did, Mark – ay, that I did. I mind the time well, when your grandfather was the head of this great county – when the proudest and the best in the land stood uncovered when he addressed them, and deemed the highest honour they could receive, an invitation to this house. In the very room where we are sitting, I’ve seen thirty guests assembled, whose names comprised the rank and station of the province; and yet, all – every man of them, regarded him as their chief, and he was so, too – the descendant of one who was a king.”

The animated features of the young man, as he listened, encouraged the O’Donoghue, and he went on. “Thirty-seven thousand acres descended to my grandfather, and even that was but a moiety of our former possessions.”

“Enough of this,” interrupted Mark rudely. “It is but an unprofitable theme. The game is up, father,” added he, in a deep stern voice, “and I, for one, have little fancy to wait for the winner to claim the stakes. Could I but see you safely out of the scrape, I’d be many a mile away, ere a week was over.”

“You would not leave me, boy!” cried the old man, as he grasped the youth’s hands in his, and gazed on him with streaming eyes. “You would not desert your poor old father. Oh, no – no, Mark; this would not be like you. A little patience, my child, and death will save you that cruelty.”

The young man’s chest heaved and fell like a swelling wave; but he never spoke, nor changed a muscle of his rigid features.

“I have borne all misfortunes well till now,” continued the father. “I cared little on my own account, Mark; my only sorrow was for you; but so long as we were together, boy – so long as hand in hand we stood against the storm, I felt that my courage never failed me. Stay by me, then, Mark – tell me that whatever comes, you’ll never leave me. Let it not be said, that when age and affliction fell upon the O’Donoghue, his son – the boy of his heart – deserted him. You shall command in every thing,” said he, with an impassioned tone, as he fixed his eyes upon the youth’s countenance. “I ask for nothing but to be near you. The house – the property – all shall be yours.”

“What house – what property – do you speak of?” said Mark, rudely. “Are we not beggars?”

The old man’s head dropped heavily; he relinquished the grasp of his son’s hand, and his outstretched arm fell powerless to his side. “I was forgetting,” murmured he, in a broken voice – “it is as you say – you are right, Mark – you must go.”

Few and simple as the words were, the utterance sunk deep into the young man’s heart; they seemed the last effort of courage wrung from despair, and breathed a pathos he was unable to resist.

“I’ll not leave you,” said he, in a voice scarce louder than a whisper: “there’s my hand upon it,” and he wrung in his strong grasp the unresisting fingers of the old man. “That’s a promise, father, and now let us speak no more about it.”

“I’ll get to my bed, Mark,” said the O’Donoghue, as he pressed his hands upon his throbbing temples. It was many a day since anything like emotion had moved him, and the conflict of passion had worn and exhausted him. “Good-night, my boy – my own boy;” and he fell upon the youth’s shoulder, half choked with sobs.

As the O’Donoghue slowly ascended the stairs, towards his bedroom, Mark threw himself upon a chair, and buried his face in his hands. His sorrow was a deep one. The resolve he had just abandoned, had been for many a day the cherished dream of his heart – his comfort under every affliction – his support against every difficulty. To seek his fortune in some foreign service – to win an honourable name, even though in a strange land, was the whole ambition of his life; and so engrossed was he in his own calculations, that he never deigned a thought of what his father might feel about it. The poverty that eats its way to the heart of families seldom fails to loosen the ties of domestic affection. The daily struggle, the hourly conflict with necessity, too often destroy the delicate and trustful sense of protection that youth should feel towards age. The energies that should have expanded into homely affection and mutual regard, are spent in warding off a common enemy; and with weary minds and seared hearts the gentler charities of life have few sympathies. Thus was it here. Mark mistook his selfishness for a feeling of independence; he thought indifference to others meant confidence in himself – and he was not the first who made the mistake.

Tired with thinking, and harassed with difficulties, through which he could see no means of escape, he threw open the window, to suffer the cool night air to blow upon his throbbing temples, and sat down beside the casement, to enjoy its refreshing influence. The candles had burned down in the apartment, and the fire, now reduced to a mere mass of red embers, scarce threw a gleam beyond the broad hearth-stone. The old tower itself flung a dark shadow upon the rock, and across the road beneath it, and, except in the chamber of the sick boy, in a distant part of the building, not a light was to be seen.

The night was calm and star-lit: a stillness almost painful reigned around. It seemed as if exhausted nature, tired with the work of storm and hurricane, had sunk into a deep and wearied sleep. Thousands of bright stars speckled the dark sky; yet the light they shed upon the earth, but dimly distinguished mountain and valley, save where the’ calm surface of the lake gave back their lustre, in a heaven, placid and motionless as their own. Now and then, a bright meteor would shoot across the blue vault, and disappear in the darkness; while in tranquil splendour, the planets shone on, as though to say, the higher destiny is to display an eternal brightness, than the brilliancy of momentary splendour, however glittering its wide career.

The young man gazed upon the sky. The lessons which, from human lips, he had rejected with scorn and impatience, now sunk deeply into his nature, from those silent monitors. The stars looked down, like eyes, into his very soul, and he felt as if he could unburthen his whole heart of its weary load, and make a confidence with heaven.

“They point ever downwards,” said he to himself, as he watched the bright streak of the falling stars, and moralized on their likeness to man’s destiny. But as he spoke, a red line shot up into the sky, and broke into ten thousand glittering spangles, shedding over glen and mountain, a faint but beauteous gleam, scarce more lasting than the meteor’s flash. It was a rocket sent up from the border of the Bay, and was quickly answered by another from the remote end of the Glen. The youth started, and leaning out from the window, looked down the valley; but nothing was to be seen or heard – all was silent as before, and already the flash of the signals, for such they must have been he could not doubt, had faded away, and the sky shone in its own spangled beauty.

“They are smugglers!” muttered Mark, as he sank back in his chair; for in that wild district such signals were employed without much fear, by those who either could trust the revenue as accomplices, or dare them by superior numbers. More than once it had occurred to him to join this lawless band, and many a pressing invitation had he received from the leaders to do so; but still, the youth’s ambition, save in his darkest hours, took a higher and a nobler range: the danger of the career was its only fascination to him. Now, however, all these thoughts were changed: he had given a solemn pledge to his father never to leave him; and it was with a feeling of half apathy he sat, pondering over what cutter it might be that had anchored, or whose party were then preparing to land their cargo.

“Ambrose Denner, belike,” muttered he to himself, “the Flemish fellow, from the Scheldt – a greedy old scoundrel too, he refused a passage to a poor wretch that broke the jail in Limerick, because he could not pay for it. I wish the people here may remember it to him. Maybe its Hans ‘der Teufel,’ though, as they call him; or Flahault – he’s the best of them, if there be a difference. I’ve half a mind to go down the Glen and see;” and while he hesitated, a low, monotonous sound of feet, as if marching, struck on his ear; and as he listened, he heard the distant tramp of men, moving in, what seemed, a great number. These could not be the smugglers, he well knew: reckless and fearless as they were, they never came in such large bodies as these noises portended.

There is something solemn in the sound of marching heard in the stillness of the night, and so Mark felt it, as with cautious breathing he leaned upon the window, and bent his ear to listen. Nearer and nearer they came, till at last the footfalls beat loudly on the dull ground as, in measured tread, they stepped. At first a dark moving mass, that seemed to fill the narrow road, was all he could discern, but as this came closer, he could perceive that they marched in companies of divisions, each headed by his leader, who, from time to time, stepped from his place, and observed their order and precision. They were all country people; their dress, as well as he could discern, the common costume of every day, undistinguished by any military emblem. Nor did they carry arms; the captains alone wore a kind of white scarf over the shoulder, which could be distinctly seen, even by the imperfect light. They, alone, carried swords, with which they checked the movements from time to time. Not a word was uttered in the dense ranks – not a murmur broke the stillness of the solemn scene, as that host poured on. The one command, “Right shoulders forward – wheel!” being given at intervals, as the parties defiled beneath the rock, at which place the road made an abrupt turning.

So strange the spectacle, so different from all he had ever witnessed or heard of, the youth, more than once half doubted lest, a wearied and fevered brain had not called up the illusion; but as he continued to gaze on the moving multitude, he was assured of its reality; and now was he harassed by conjectures what it all should mean. For nearly an hour – to him it seemed many such – the human tide flowed on, till at length the sounds grew fainter, and the last party moved by, followed, at a little distance, by two figures on horseback. Their long cloaks concealed the wearers completely from his view, but he could distinctly mark the steel scabbards of swords, and hear their heavy clank against the horses’ flanks.

Suffering their party to proceed, the horsemen halted for a few seconds at the foot of the rock, and as they reined in, one called out to the other, in a voice, every syllable of which fell distinctly on Mark’s ears —

“That’s the place, Godfrey; and even by this light you can judge of its strength.”

“But why is he not with us?” said the other hastily. “Has he not an inheritance to win back – a confiscation to wipe out?”

“True enough,” said the first speaker; “but eighty winters do not improve a man’s nerve for an hazardous exploit. He has a son though, and, as I hear, a bold fellow.”

“Look to him, Harvey: it is of moment that we should have one so near the Bay. See to this quickly. If he be like what you say, and desires a command – ” The rest was lost in the sound of their retreating hoofs, for already the party resumed their journey, and were in a few minutes hidden from his view.

With many a conflicting doubt, and many a conjecture, each wilder than the other, Mark pondered over what he had seen, nor noted the time as it slipped past, till the grey tint of day-dawn warned him of the hour. The rumbling sounds of a country cart just then attracted his attention, and he beheld a countryman, with a little load of turf, on his way to the market at Killarney. Seeing that the man must have met the procession, he called aloud —

“I say, my good man, where were they all marching, to-night – those fellows?”

“What fellows, your honour?” said the man, as he touched his hat obsequiously.

“That great crowd of people – you could not help meeting them – there was no other road they could take.”

“Sorra man, woman, or child I seen, your honour, since I left home, and that’s eight miles from this,” and so saying he followed his journey, leaving Mark in greater bewilderment than before.

CHAPTER XIII. THE GUARDSMAN

Leaving for a brief season Glenflesk and its inhabitants, we shall ask of our readers to accompany us to London, to a scene somewhat different from that of our last chapter.

In a handsomely furnished drawing-room in St. James’s street, where the appliances of ease and luxury were blended with the evidence of those tastes so popular among young men of fashion of the period, sat, or rather lay, in a deep cushioned arm-chair, a young officer, who, even in the dishabille of the morning, and with the evident traces of fatigue and dissipation on his brow, was strikingly handsome. Though not more than three or four-and-twenty, the habits of his life, and the assured features of his character, made him appear several years older. In figure he was tall and well-proportioned, while his countenance bore those lineaments which are pre-eminently distinguished as Saxon, – massive but well-chiselled features, the harmony of whose expression is even more striking than their individual excellence, a look of frank daring, which many were prone to attribute to superciliousness, was the most marked trait in his face, nor was the impression lessened by a certain “hauteur,” which military men of the time assumed, and which, he, in particular, somewhat prided himself on.

The gifts of fortune and the graces of person will often seem to invest their possessor with attributes of insolence and overbearing, which are, in reality, nothing more than the unbridled buoyancy of youth and power revelling in its own exercise.

We have no fancy to practise mystery with our reader, and shall at once introduce him to Frederick Travers, Sir Marmaduke’s only son, and Captain in the first regiment of Guards. Wealth and good looks were about as popular fifty years ago, as they are in the year we write in, and Frederick Travers was as universal a favorite in the circles he frequented as any man of his day. Courtly manners, spirits nothing could depress, a courage nothing could daunt, expensive tastes, gratified as rapidly as they were conceived, were all accessaries which won their way among his acquaintances, and made them proud of his intimacy, and boastful of his friendship. That circumstances like these should have rendered a young man self-willed and imperious, is not to be wondered at, and such was he in reality – less, however, from the unlimited license of his position, than from an hereditary feature which distinguished every member of his family, and made them as intolerant of restraint, as they were wayward in purpose. The motto of their house was the index of their character, and in every act and thought they seemed under the influence of their emblazoned inscription, “A tort et à travers.”

Over his father, Frederick Travers exercised an unlimited influence; from his boyhood upward he had never met a contradiction, and the natural goodness of his temper, and the affectionate turn of his disposition, made the old man believe in the excellence of a system, whose success lay less in its principle, than in the virtue of him, on whom it was practised.

Sir Marmaduke felt proud of his son’s career in the world, and enjoyed to the utmost all the flattery which the young man’s acceptance in society conferred; he was proud of him, almost as much as he was fond of him, and a letter from Frederick had always the effect of restoring his spirits, no matter how deep their depression the moment before.

The youth returned his father’s affection with his whole heart; he knew and valued all the high and generous principles of his nature; he estimated with an honest pride those gifts which had won Sir Marmaduke the esteem and respect of his fellow-citizens; but yet, he thought he could trace certain weaknesses of character, from which his own more enlarged sphere of life had freed him.

Fashionable associates, the society of men of wit and pleasure, seem often to suggest more acute and subtle views of life, than are to be obtained in less exalted and distinguished company; the smart sayings and witty epigrams which are current among clever men appear to be so many texts in the wisdom of the world. Nothing is more common than this mistake; nothing more frequent than to find, that intercourse with such people diffuses few, if any, of their distinguishing merits among their less gifted associates, who rarely learn any thing from the intercourse, but a hearty contempt for all who are debarred from it. Frederick was of this school; the set he moved in was his religion – their phrases, their prejudices, their passions, he regarded as standards for all imitation. It is not surprising, then, if he conceived many of his father’s notions obsolete and antiquated, and had they not been his, he would have treated them as ridiculous.

This somewhat tedious explanation of a character with whom we have not any very lengthened business hereafter, demands some apology from us, still, without it we should be unable to explain to our reader the reason of those events to whose narrative we are hastening.

On the table, among the materials of a yet untasted breakfast, lay an open letter, of which, from time to time, the young man read, and as often threw from him, with expressions of impatience and anger. A night of more than ordinary dissipation had made him irritable, and the contents of the epistle did not seem of a character to calm him.

“I knew it,” said he at last, as he crushed the letter in his hand. “I knew it, well; my poor father is unfit to cope with those savages; what could ever have persuaded him to venture among them I know not! the few hundreds a year the whole estate produces, are not worth as many weeks’ annoyance. Hemsworth knows them well; he is the only man fit to deal with them. Heigho!” said he, with a sigh, “there is nothing for it I suppose, but to bring them back again as soon as may be – and this confounded accident Hemsworth has met with in the Highlands, will lay him on his back these five weeks – I must e’en go myself. Yet nothing was ever more ill-timed. The Queen’s fête at Frogmore, fixed for Wednesday; there’s the tennis match on Friday, – and Saturday, the first day of the Stag hounds. It is too bad. Hemsworth is greatly to blame; he should have been candid about these people, and not have made his Pandemonium an Arcadia. My father is also to blame; he might have asked my advice about this trip; and Sybella, too – why didn’t she write? She above all should have warned me about the folly;” and thus did he accuse in turn all the parties concerned in a calamity, which, after all, he saw chiefly reflected in the inconvenience it caused himself.

Now, assuredly, Hemsworth requires some vindication at our hands. It had never entered into that worthy man’s most imaginative conceptions, to believe a visit from Sir Marmaduke to his Irish property within the reach of possibility; for although, as we have already said, he was in the constant habit of entreating Sir Marmaduke to bestow this mark of condescension on his Irish tenants, he ever contrived to accompany the recommendation with certain casual hints about the habits and customs of the natives, as might well be supposed sufficient to deter a more adventurous traveller than the old baronet; and while he pressed him to come, and see for himself, he at the same time plied him with newspapers and journals, whose columns were crammed with the fertile theme of outrage; the editorial comments on which often indicated a barbarism even deeper than the offence they affected to deplore. The accident which ultimately led to Sir Marmaduke’s hurried journey, was a casualty which Hemsworth had overlooked, and when he heard that the family were actually domesticated at “the Lodge,” his regrets were indeed great. It was only on the day before the intelligence reached him – for the letter had followed him from place to place for a fortnight – that he had the misfortune to break his leg, by a fall from a cliff in deer shooting. Whatever the urgency of the measure, he was totally incapable of undertaking a journey to Ireland, whither, under other circumstances, he would have hastened with all speed. Hemsworth’s correspondent, of whom we shall have occasion to speak more, hereafter, was the sub-agent of the estate, – a creature of his own, in every sense, and far more in his interest, than in that of his principal. He told him, in forcible terms, how Sir Marmaduke had commenced his work of Irish reformation; that, already, both the baronet and his daughter had undertaken the task of improvement among the tenantry; that rents were to be lowered, school-houses erected, medical aid provided for the sick and suffering, more comfortable dwellings built, more liberal wages allowed; he narrated, how rapidly the people, at first suspicious and distrustful, were learning to feel confidence in their benefactor, and anxious to avail themselves of his benevolence; but more than all, he dwelt upon the conviction, which every hour gained ground among them, that Hemsworth had misrepresented the landlord, and that, so far from being himself the instrument of, he had been the obstacle to, their welfare and happiness. The letter concluded with a pressing entreaty for his speedy return to “the Lodge,” as, should he be longer absent, the mischief would become past remedy.

Never did agent receive an epistle more alarming; he saw the game, for which he had been playing half a lifetime, slip from him at the very moment of winning. For above twenty years his heart was set upon becoming the owner of the estate; all his plans, his plots, his machinations, had no other end or object. From the deepest stroke of his policy, to the most trivial act of his power, he had held this in view. By his artful management a veil was intercepted between the landlord and the people, which no acuteness on either side could penetrate. The very acts intended as benefits by the owner of the soil, passed through such a medium, that they diverged from their destined direction, and fell, less as blessings than inflictions. The landlord was taught to regard the tenant, as incurably sunk in barbarism, ignorance, and superstition. The tenant to suppose the landlord, a cruel, unfeeling task-master, with no care but for his rent; neither sympathy for their sufferings, nor sorrow for their calamities. Hemsworth played his game like a master; for while obtaining the smallest amount of rental for his chief, he exacted the most onerous and impoverishing terms from the people. Thus diminishing the apparent value of the property, he hoped one day to be able to purchase, and at the same time preparing it for becoming a lucrative and valuable possession, for although the rents were nominally low, the amount of fees and “duty-labor” were enormous. There was scarcely a man upon the property whose rent was paid to the day and hour, and for the favour of some brief delay, certain services were exacted, which virtually reduced the tenants to a vassalage the most miserable and degrading.

If, then, the eye ranged over a district of a poverty-struck and starving peasantry, with wretched hovels, naked children, and rude, unprofitable tillage, let the glance but turn to the farm around “the Lodge,” and, there, the trim fences, the well-weeded corn, and the nicely-cultivated fields, were an evidence of what well-directed labour could effect; and the astounding lesson seemed to say: – Here is an object for imitation. Look at yonder wheat: see that clover, and the meadow beyond it. They could all do likewise. Their land is the same, the climate the same, the rent the same; but yet ignorance and obstinacy are incurable. They will not be taught – prefer their own barbarous ways to newer and better methods – in fact, are beyond the lessons of either precept or example.

Yet what was the real case? To till that model-farm, to make these fields the perfection you see them, families were starving – age, left to totter to the grave, uncared-for – manhood, pining in want and misery, and infancy, to dawn upon suffering, to last a life long. Duty-labour calls the poor man from the humble care of his own farm, to come, with his whole house, and toil upon the rich man’s fields, the requital for which is some poor grace of a week’s or a month’s forbearance, ere he be called on for that rent these exactions are preventing him from earning. Duty-labour summons him from his own profitless ground, to behold the fruits his exertions are raising for another’s enjoyment, and of which he must never taste! Duty-labour calls the days of fair sky and sunshine, and leaves him the gloomy hours of winter, when, with darkness without, and despair within, he may brood, as he digs, over the disproportioned fortunes of his tyrant and himself! Duty-labour is the type of a slavery, that hardens the heart, by extinguishing all hope, and uprooting every feeling of self-confidence and reliance, till, in abject and degraded misery, the wretched man grows reckless of his life, while his vengeance yearns for that of his task master.

Nor does the system end here; – the agent must be conciliated by presents of various kinds; – the humble pittance, wrung from misery, and hoarded up by industry, must be offered to him, as the means of obtaining some poor and petty favour, most frequently, one, the rightful due of the asker. A tyranny like this spreads its baneful influence far beyond the afflictions of mere poverty – it breaks down the spirit, it demoralizes the heart of a people; for where was black-mail ever extorted, that it did not engender cruelty on the one hand, and abject slavery on the other?

So far from regarding those placed above them in rank and station, as their natural friends and protectors, the peasantry felt the great man as their oppressor; they knew him not, as their comforter in sickness, their help in time of trouble – they only saw in him, the rigid exactor of his rent, the merciless task-master, who cared not for time or season, save those that brought round the period of repayment; and as, year by year, poverty and misery ate deeper into their natures, and hope died out, fearful thoughts of retribution flashed upon minds, on which no prospect of better days shone; and, in the gloomy desolation of their dark hours, they wished and prayed for any change, come in what shape, and surrounded by what danger it might, if only this bondage should cease.