Roland Cashel, Volume I (of II)

“And who is he, sir, yonder?” asked he, as a youth, with no other clothing than a shirt and trousers, was fencing against a tree, practising, by bounds and springs, every imaginable species of attack and assault.

“A young Spaniard from the Basque,” said Cashel, coolly; “he has a duel to-morrow with some fellow in Barcelonetta, and he ‘s getting his wrist into play.” Then calling out, he said, “Ah, José, you mean to let blood, I see!”

“He’s only a student,” said the youth, with an insolent toss of his head. “But who have we here?”

“A friend and countryman of mine, Mr. Simms,” said Cashel, introducing the little man, who performed a whole circuit round the young Spaniard in salutations.

“Come to join us?” asked the youth, surveying him with cool impertinence. “What in the devil’s name hast thou done that thou shouldst leave the Old World at thy time of life? Virtuous living or hypocrisy ought to have become a habit with thee ere now, old boy, eh?”

“He’s only on a visit,” said Cashel, laughing; “he can return to good society, not like all of us here.”

“Would you infer from that, sir – ”

“Keep your temper, José,” said Cashel, with an indescribable assumption of insolent superiority; “or, if you cannot, keep your courage for the students, whose broils best suit you.”

“You presume somewhat too far on your skill with the rapier, Senhor Cashel,” said the other, but in a voice far less elevated than before.

“You can test the presumption at any moment,” said Cashel, insolently; “now, if you like it.”

“Oh, Mr. Cashel! oh, Mr. Roland! for mercy’s sake, don’t!” exclaimed Simms.

“Never fear,” interposed Cashel; “that excellent young man has better principles than you fancy, and never neglects, though he sometimes forgets, himself.”

So saying, he leisurely passed his arm beneath Simms’s, and led him forward.

“Good day, Senhor Cashel,” said a tall and well-dressed man, who made his salutations with a certain air of distinction that induced Simms to inquire who and what he was.

“A general in the service of one of the minor States of Germany,” said Cashel; “a man of great professional skill, and, it is said, of great personal bravery.”

“And in what capacity is he here?”

“A refugee. His sentence to be shot was commuted to imprisonment for life. He made his escape from Spandau, and came here.”

“What was his crime?”

“Treachery, – the very basest one can well conceive; he commanded the fort of Bergstein, which the French attacked on their advance in the second Austrian campaign. The assailants had no heavy artillery, nor any material for escalade; but they had money, and gold proved a better battering-train than lead. Plittersdorf – that’s the general’s name – fired over their heads till he had expended all his ammunition, and then surrendered, with the garrison, as prisoners of war. The French, however, exchanged him afterwards, and he very nearly paid the penalty of his false faith.”

“And now is he shunned, – do people avoid him?”

“How should they? How many here are privileged to look down on a traitor? Is it the runaway merchant, the defaulting bank clerk, the filching commissary, that can say shame to one whose crime stands higher in the scale of offence? The best we can know of any one here is, that his rascality took an aspiring turn; and yet there are some fellows one would not like to think ill of. Here comes one such; and as I have something like business to treat of with him, I ‘ll ask you to wait for me, on this bench, till I join you.”

Without waiting for any reply, Cashel hastened forward, and taking off his hat, saluted a sallow-looking man of some eight-and-forty or fifty years of age, who, in a loose morning-gown, and with a book in his hand, was strolling along in one of the alleys.

“Ha, lieutenant,” said the other, as, lifting up his eyes, he recognized Cashel, – “making the most of these short hours of pleasure, eh? You ‘ve heard the news, I suppose; we shall be soon afloat again.”

“So I’ve heard, captain!” replied Cashel; “but I believe we have taken our last cruise together.”

“How so, lad? You look well, and in spirits; and as for myself, I never felt in better humor than to try a bout with our friends on the western coast.”

“You have no friend, captain, can better like to hear you say so; and as for me, the chances of fortune have changed. I have discovered that I need neither risk head nor limbs for gold; a worthy man has arrived here to-day with tidings that I am the owner of a large estate, and more money than I shall well know how to squander, and so – ”

“And so you ‘ll leave us for the land where men have learned that art? Quite right, Cashel. At your age a man can accustom himself to any and everything; at mine – a little later – at mine, for instance, the task is harder. I remember myself, some years ago, fancying that I should enjoy prodigiously that life of voluptuous civilization they possess in the Old World, where men’s wants are met ere they are well felt, and hundreds – ay, thousands – are toiling and thinking to minister to the rich man’s pleasures. It so chanced that I took a prize a few weeks after; she was a Portuguese barque with specie, broad doubloons and gold bars for the mint at Lisbon, and so I threw up my command and went over to France and to Paris. The first dash was glorious; all was new, glittering, and splendid; every sense steeped in a voluptuous entrancement; thought was out of the question, and one only could wonder at the barbarism that before seemed to represent life, and sorrow for years lost and wasted in grosser enjoyment. Then came a reaction, at first slight, but each day stronger; the headache of the debauch, the doubt of your mistress’s fidelity, your friend’s truth, your own enduring good fortune, – all these lie in wait together, and spring out on you in some gloomy hour, like Malays boarding a vessel at night, and crowding down from maintop and mizen! There is no withstanding; you must strike or fly. I took the last alternative, and, leaving my splendid quarters one morning at daybreak, hastened to Havre. Not a thought of regret crossed me; so quiet a life seemed to sap my very courage, and prey upon my vitals; that same night I swung once more in a hammock, with the rushing water beside my ear, and never again tried those dissipations that pall from their very excess; for, after all, no pleasure is lasting which is not dashed with the sense of danger.”

While he was yet speaking, a female figure, closely veiled, passed close to where they stood, and, without attracting any notice, slipped into Cashel’s hand a slip of paper. Few as the words it contained were, they seemed to excite his very deepest emotion, and it was with a faltering voice he asked the captain by what step he could most speedily obtain his release from the service?

A tiresome statement of official forms was the answer; but Roland’s impatience did not hear it out, as he said, —

“And is there no other way, – by gold, for instance?”

A cold shrug of the shoulders met this sally, and the captain said, —

“To corrupt the officials of the Government is called treason by our laws, and is punishable by death, just like desertion.” \

“Therefore is desertion the better course, as it involves none but one,” said Cashel, laughing, as he turned away.

CHAPTER IV. THE KENNYFECK HOUSEHOLD

Man, being reasonable, must dine out;
The best of life is but a dinner-party.

    Amphytrion, Canto IV.
It was about half-past six of an autumn evening, just as the gray twilight was darkening into the gloom that precedes night, that a servant, dressed in the most decorous black, drew down the window-blinds of a large and splendidly furnished drawing-room of a house in Merrion Square, Dublin.

Having arranged certain portly deep-cushioned chairs into the orderly disorder that invites social groupings, and having disposed various other articles of furniture according to those notions of domestic landscape so popular at the present day, he stirred the fire and withdrew, – all these motions being performed with the noiseless decorum of a church.

A glance at the apartment, even by the fitful light of the coal-fire, showed that it was richly, even magnificently, furnished. The looking-glasses were immense in size, and framed with all that the most lavish art of the carver could display. The hangings were costly Lyons silk, the sofas, tables, and cabinets were all exquisite specimens of modern skill and elegance, while the carpet almost rose above the foot in the delicate softness of its velvet pile. A harp, a grand pianoforte, and several richly-bound and gilded volumes strewed about gave evidence of tastes above the mere voluptuous enjoyment of ease, and in one window stood an embroidery-frame, with its unfinished labor, from which the threads depended in that fashion, that showed it had lately occupied the fair hands of the artist.

This very enviable apartment belonged to Mr. Mountjoy Kennyfeck, the leading solicitor of Dublin, a man who, for something more than thirty years, had stood at the head of his walk in the capital, and was reputed to be one of its most respected and richest citizens. Mrs. Mountjoy Kennyfeck – neither for our own nor our reader’s convenience dare we omit the “prénom” – was of a western family considerably above that of her liege lord and master in matter of genealogy, but whose quarterings had so far survived the family acres that she was fain to accept the hand of a wealthy attorney, after having for some years been the belle of her county, and the admired beauty of Castle balls and drawing-rooms.

It had been at first, indeed, a very hard struggle for the O’Haras to adopt the style and title of Kennyfeck, and poor Matilda was pitied in all the moods and tenses for exchanging the riotous feudalism of Mayo for the decorous quietude and wealthy insouciance of a Dublin mansion; and the various scions of the house did not scruple to express very unqualified opinions on the subject of her fall; but Time – that heals so much – Time and Mr. Kennyfeck’s claret, of which they all drank most liberally during the visits to town, assuaged the rancor of these prejudices, and “Matty,” it was hinted, might have done worse; while some hardy spirit averred that “Kennyfeck, though not one of ourselves, has a great deal of the gentleman about him, notwithstanding.”

A word of Mr. Kennyfeck himself, and even a word will almost suffice. He was a very tall, pompous-looking personage, with a retiring forehead and a large prominent nose; he wore a profusion of powder, and always dressed in the most scrupulous black; he spoke little, and that slowly; he laughed never. It was not that he was melancholy or depressed; it seemed rather that his nature had been fashioned in conformity with the onerous responsibilities of his pursuit, and that he would have deemed any exhibition of mirthful emotion unseemly and unbecoming one who, so to say, was a kind of high priest in the temple of equity. Next to the Chancellor’s he venerated the decisions of Mrs. Kennyfeck; after Mrs. Kennyfeck came the Master of the Rolls. This was his brief and simple faith, and it is astonishing in what simple rules of guidance men amass vast fortunes, and obtain the highest suffrages of civic honor and respect!

Mr. Kennyfeck’s family consisted of two daughters: the eldest had been a beauty for some years, and, even at the period our tale opens, had lost few of her attractions. She was tall, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, with an air of what in the Irish capital is called “decided fashion” about her, but in less competent circles might have been called almost effrontery. She looked strangers very steadily in the face, spoke with a voice full, firm, and unabashed, – no matter what the subject, or who the audience, – and gave her opinions on people and events with a careless indifference to consequences that many mistook for high genius rebellious against control.

Olivia, three years younger than her sister, had just come out; and whether that her beauty – and she was very handsome – required a different style, or that she saw more clearly “the mistake” in Miss Kennyfeck’s manner, but she took a path perfectly her own. She was tenderness itself; a delicacy too susceptible for this work-a-day world pervaded all she said and did, – a retiring sensitiveness that she knew, as she plaintively said, would never “let her be loved,” overlaid her nature, and made her the victim of her own feelings. Her sketches, everlasting Madonnas dissolved in tears; her music, the most mournful of the melodies; her reading, the most disastrously ending of modern poems, – all accorded with this tone, which, after all, scarcely consorted well with a very blooming cheek, bright hazel eyes, and an air and carriage that showed a full consciousness of her captivations, and no small reliance on her capacity to exercise them.

A brief interval after the servant left the room, the door opened, and Mrs. Kennyfeck entered. She was dressed for dinner, and if not exactly attired for the reception of a large company, exhibited, in various details of her costume, unequivocal signs of more than common care. A massive diamond brooch fastened the front of her dark velvet dress, and on her fingers several rings of great value glittered. Miss Kennyfeck, too, who followed her, was, though simply, most becomingly dressed; the light and floating material of her robe contrasting well with the more stately folds of the matronly costume of her mother.

“I am surprised they are not here before this,” said Mrs. Kennyfeck, lying back in the deep recess of a luxurious chair, and placing a screen between herself and the fire. “Your father said positively on the 5th, and as the weather has been most favorable, I cannot understand the delay. The packets arrive at four, I think?”

“Yes, at four, and the carriage left this at three to fetch them.”

“Read the note again, – he writes so very briefly always. I ‘m sure I wish the dear man would understand that I am not a client, and that a letter is not exactly all it might be, because it can be charged its thirteen-and-fourpence, or six-and-eightpence, whatever it is.”

Miss Kennyfeck took an open note from the chimney, and read: —

Dear Mrs. Kennyfeck, – We have made all the necessary arrangements in London, and shall leave on the 2nd, so as to arrive at Merrion Square by the 5th. Mr. C – would, I believe, rather have remained another day in town; but there was no possibility of doing so, as the “Chancellor” will sit on Tuesday. Love to the girls, and believe me, yours very truly,