Roland Cashel, Volume II (of II)

“You mistake much,” said Tiernay; “the partnership will not be so easily relinquished by him who reaps all the profit.”

“You read me only as a dupe,” said Cashel, fiercely.

Tiernay made no reply, but waving his hand in adieu, left the room.

CHAPTER XXII. LINTON INSTIGATES KEANE TO MURDER

Hell’s eloquence – “Temptation!”

    Harold

Tom Keane, the gatekeeper, sat moodily at his door on the morning after the events recorded in our last chapter. His reflections seemed of the gloomiest, and absorbed him so completely that he never noticed the mounted groom, who, despatched to seek the doctor for Lord Kilgoff, twice summoned him in vain to open the gate.

“Halloa!” cried the smartly equipped servant, “stupid! will you open that gate, I say?”

“It ‘s not locked,” said Tom, looking up, but without the slightest indication of obeying the request.

“Don’t you see the mare won’t stand?” cried he, with an oath.

Tom smoked away without replying.

“Sulky brute you are!” cried the groom; “I ‘m glad we ‘re to see the last of you soon.”

With this he managed to open the gate and pass on his way.

“So it’s for turnin’ me out yez are,” said Tom to himself; “turnin’ me out on the road – to starve, or maybe – to rob” – (these words were uttered between the puffs of his tobacco-smoke) – “after forty years in the same place.”

The shrill barking of a cur-dog, an animal that in spitefulness as in mangy condition seemed no bad type of its master, now aroused him, and Tom muttered, “Bite him, Blaze! hould him fast, yer soule!”

“Call off your dog, Keane – call him off!” cried out a voice whose tones at once bespoke a person of condition; and at the same instant Linton appeared. “You’d better fasten him up, for I feel much tempted to ballast his heart with a bullet.”

And he showed a pistol which he held at full cock in his fingers.

“Faix, ye may shoot him for all I care,” said Tom; “he’s losing his teeth, and won’t be worth a ‘trawneen’ ‘fore long. Go in there – into the house,” cried he, sulkily; and the animal shrank away, craven and cowed.

“You ought to keep him tied up,” said Linton; “every one complains of him.”

“So I hear,” said Tom, with a low, sardonic laugh; “he used only to bite the beggars, but he’s begun now to be wicked with the gentlemen. I suppose he finds they taste mighty near alike.”

“Just so,” said Linton, laughing; “if the cur could speak, he ‘d tell us a laborer was as tender as ‘my lord.’ I’ve come over to see you,” added he, after a moment’s pause, “and to say that I ‘m sorry to have failed in my undertaking regarding you; they are determined to turn you out.”

“I was thinking so,” said Tom, moodily.

“I did my best. I told them you had been many years on the estate – ”

“Forty-two.”

“Just so. I said forty and upwards – that your children had grown up on it – that you were actually like a part of the property. I spoke of the hardship of turning a man at your time of life, with a helpless family too, upon the wide world. I even went so far as to say that these were not the times for such examples; that there was a spirit abroad of regard for the poor man, a watchful inquiry into the evils of his condition, that made these 4 clearances,’ as they call them, unwise and impolitic, as well as cruel.”

“An’ what did they say to that?” asked Tom, abruptly.

“Laughed – laughed heartily.”

“They laughed?”

“No – I am wrong,” said Linton, quickly. “Kennyfeck did not laugh; on the contrary, he seemed grave, and observed that up at Drumcoologan – is there such a name?”

“Ay, and nice boys they ‘re in it,” said Tom, nodding.

“‘Well, up at Drumcoologan,’ said he, ‘such a step would be more than dangerous.’

“‘How do you mean?’ said Mr. Cashel.

“‘They ‘d take the law into their own hands,’ replied Kennyfeck. The man who would evict one of those fellows might as well make his will, if he wished to leave one behind him. They are determined fellows, whose fathers and grandfathers have lived and died on the land, and find it rather hard to understand how a bit of parchment with a big seal on it should have more force than kith and kindred.”

“Did ould Kennyfeck say that?” asked Tom, with a glance of unutterable cunning.

“No,” replied Linton; “that observation was mine, for really I was indignant at that summary system which disposes of a population as coolly as men change the cattle from one pasturage to another. Mr. Cashel, however, contented himself with a laugh, and such a laugh as, for his sake, I am right glad none of his unhappy tenantry were witness to.”

“‘You may do as you please down here, sir,’ said Kenny-feck – who, by the way, does not seem to be any friend of yours – ‘but the Drumcoologan fellows must be humored.’

“‘I will see that,’ said Mr. Cashel, who, in his own hotheaded way, actually likes opposition, ‘but we ‘ll certainly begin with this fellow Keane.’

“‘I suppose you’ll give him the means to emigrate?’ said I, addressing Kennyfeck.

“‘We generally do in these cases,’ said he.

“‘I’ll not give the scoundrel a farthing,’ broke in Mr. Cashel. ‘I took a dislike to him from the very hour I came here.’ And then he went on to speak about the dirt and neglect about the gate-lodge, the ragged appearance of the children – even your own looks displeased him; in fact, I saw plainly that somehow you had contrived to make him your enemy, not merely of a few days’ standing, but actually from the moment of his first meeting you. Kennyfeck, though not your friend, behaved better than I expected: he said that to turn you out was to leave you to starve; that there was no employment to be had in the country; that your children were all young and helpless; that you were not accustomed to daily labor; indeed, he made out your case to be a very hard one, and backed as it was by myself, I hoped that we should have succeeded; but, as I said before, Mr. Cashel, for some reason of his own, or perhaps without any reason, hates you. He has resolved that out you shall go, and go you must!”

Keane said nothing, but sat moodily moving his foot backwards and forwards on the gravel.

“For Mr. Cashel’s sake, I ‘m not sorry the lot has fallen upon a quiet-tempered fellow like yourself; there are plenty here who would n’t bear the hardship so patiently.”

Keane looked up, and the keen twinkle of his gray eyes seemed to read the other’s very thoughts. Linton, so proof against the searching glances of the well-bred world, actually cowered under the vulgar stare of the peasant.

“So you think he’s lucky that I ‘m not one of the Drumcoologan boys?” said Keane; and his features assumed a smile of almost insolent meaning.

“They’re bold fellows, I’ve heard,” said Linton, “and quick to resent an injury.”

“Maybe there’s others just as ready,” said he, doggedly.

“Many are ready to feel one,” said Linton; “that I’m well aware of. The difference is that some men sit down under their sorrows, crestfallen and beaten; others rise above them, and make their injuries the road to fortune. And really, much as people say against this ‘wild justice’ of the people, when we consider they have no other possible – that the law is ever against them – that their own right hand alone is their defence against oppression – one cannot wonder that many a tyrant landlord falls beneath the stroke of the ruined tenant, and particularly when the tyranny dies with the tyrant.”

Keane listened greedily, but spoke not; and Linton went on, —

“It so often happens that, as in the present case, by the death of one man, the estate gets into Chancery; and then it’s nobody’s affair who pays and who does not. Tenants then have as mach right as the landlord used to have. As the rents have no owner, there’s little trouble taken to collect them; and when any one makes a bold stand and refuses to pay, they let him alone, and just turn upon the others that are easier to deal with.”

“That’s the way it used to be here long ago,” said Keane.