Lord Kilgobbin Part 54

'I fear me it must have been written in other days,' said Father Luke.

'There is no intention to desert or abandon him, I a.s.sure you,' said Miller, addressing him in a low but eager tone. 'I could never--no Irishman could--ally himself to an administration which should sacrifice the Holy See. With the bigotry that prevails in England, the question requires most delicate handling; and even a pledge cannot be given except in language so vague and unprecise as to admit of many readings.'

'Why not bring in a Bill to give him a subsidy, a something per annum, or a round sum down?' cried Gorman.

'Mr. Miller has just shown us that Exeter Hall might become dangerous.

English intolerance is not a thing to be rashly aroused.'

'If I had to deal with him, I'd do as Bright proposed with your landlords here. I'd buy him out, give him a handsome sum for his interest, and let him go.'

'And how would you deal with the Church, sir?' asked the priest.

'I have not thought of that; but I suppose one might put it into commission, as they say, or manage it by a Board, with a First Lord, like the Admiralty.'

'I will give you some tea, gentlemen, when you appear in the drawing-room,'

said Miss Betty, rising with dignity, as though her condescension in sitting so long with the party had been ill rewarded by her nephew's sentiments.

The priest, however, offered his arm, and the others followed as he left the room.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

AN EARLY GALLOP

Mathew Kearney had risen early, an unusual thing with him of late; but he had some intention of showing his guest Mr. Walpole over the farm after breakfast, and was anxious to give some preliminary orders to have everything 's.h.i.+p-shape' for the inspection.

To make a very disorderly and much-neglected Irish farm a.s.sume an air of discipline, regularity, and neatness at a moment's notice, was pretty much such an exploit as it would have been to muster an Indian tribe, and pa.s.s them before some Prussian martinet as a regiment of guards.

To make the ill-fenced and misshapen fields seem trim paddocks, wavering and serpentining furrows appear straight and regular lines of tillage, weed-grown fields look marvels of cleanliness and care, while the lounging and ragged population were to be pa.s.sed off as a thriving and industrious peasantry, well paid and contented, were difficulties that Mr. Kearney did not propose to confront. Indeed, to do him justice, he thought there was a good deal of pedantic and 'model-farming' humbug about all that English pa.s.sion for neatness he had read of in public journals, and as our fathers--better gentlemen, as he called them, and more hospitable fellows than any of us--had got on without steam-mowing and thres.h.i.+ng, and bone-crus.h.i.+ng, he thought we might farm our properties without being either blacksmiths or stokers.

'G.o.d help us,' he would say, 'I suppose we'll be chewing our food by steam one of these days, and filling our stomachs by hydraulic pressure. But for my own part, I like something to work for me that I can swear at when it goes wrong. There's little use in cursing a cylinder.'

To have heard him amongst his labourers that morning, it was plain to see that they were not in the category of machinery. On one pretext or another, however, they had slunk away one by one, so that at last he found himself storming alone in a stubble-field, with no other companion than one of Kate's terriers. The sharp barking of this dog aroused him in the midst of his imprecations, and looking over the dry-stone wall that inclosed the field, he saw a horseman coming along at a sharp canter, and taking the fences as they came like a man in a hunting-field. He rode well, and was mounted upon a strong wiry hackney--a cross-bred horse, and of little money value, but one of those active cats of horseflesh that a knowing hand can appreciate. Now, little as Kearney liked the liberty of a man riding over his ditches and his turnips when out of hunting season, his old love of good horsemans.h.i.+p made him watch the rider with interest and even pleasure.

'May I never!' muttered he to himself, 'if he's not coming at this wall.'

And as the inclosure in question was built of large jagged stones, without mortar, and fully four feet in height, the upper course being formed of a sort of coping in which the stones stood edgewise, the attempt did look somewhat rash. Not taking the wall where it was slightly breached, and where some loose stones had fallen, the rider rode boldly at one of the highest portions, but where the ground was good on either side.

'He knows what he's at!' muttered Kearney, as the horse came bounding over and alighted in perfect safety in the field.

'Well done! whoever you are,' cried Kearney, delighted, as the rider removed his hat and turned round to salute him.

'And don't you know me, sir?' asked he.

''Faith, I do not,' replied Kearney; 'but somehow I think I know the chestnut. To be sure I do. There's the old mark on her knee, how ever she found the man who could throw her down. Isn't she Miss O'Shea's Kattoo?'

'That she is, sir, and I'm her nephew.'

'Are you?' said Kearney dryly.

The young fellow was so terribly pulled up by the unexpected repulse--more marked even by the look than the words of the other--that he sat unable to utter a syllable. 'I had hoped, sir,' said he at last, 'that I had not outgrown your recollection, as I can promise none of your former kindness to me has outgrown mine.'

'But it took you three weeks to recall it, all the same,' said Kearney.

'It is true, sir, I am very nearly so long here; but my aunt, whose guest I am, told me I must be called on first; that--I'm sure I can't say for whose benefit it was supposed to be--I should not make the first visit; in fact, there was some rule about the matter, and that I must not contravene it.

And although I yielded with a very bad grace, I was in a measure under orders, and dared not resist.'

'She told you, of course, that we were not on our old terms: that there was a coldness between the families, and we had seen nothing of each other lately?'

'Not a word of it, sir.'

'Nor of any reason why you should not come here as of old?'

'None, on my honour; beyond this piece of stupid etiquette, I never heard of anything like a reason.'

'I am all the better pleased with my old neighbour,' said Kearney, in his more genial tone. 'Not, indeed, that I ought ever to have distrusted her, but for all that--Well, never mind,' muttered he, as though debating the question with himself, and unable to decide it, 'you are here now--eh! You are here now.'

'You almost make me suspect, sir, that I ought not to be here now.'

'At all events, if you were waiting for me you wouldn't be here. Is not that true, young gentleman?'

'Quite true, sir, but not impossible to explain.' And he now flung himself to the ground, and with the rein over his arm, came up to Kearney's side.

'I suppose, but for an accident, I should have gone on waiting for that visit you had no intention to make me, and canva.s.sing with myself how long you were taking to make up your mind to call on me, when I heard only last night that some noted rebel--I'll remember his name in a minute or two--was seen in the neighbourhood, and that the police were on his track with a warrant, and even intended to search for him here.'

'In my house--in Kilgobbin Castle?'

'Yes, here in your house, where, from a sure information, he had been harboured for some days. This fellow--a head-centre, or leader, with a large sum on his head--has, they say, got away; but the hope of finding some papers, some clue to him here, will certainly lead them to search the castle, and I thought I'd come over and apprise you of it at all events, lest the surprise should prove too much for your temper.'

'Do they forget I'm in the commission of the peace?' said Kearney, in a voice trembling with pa.s.sion.

'You know far better than me how far party spirit tempers life in this country, and are better able to say whether some private intention to insult is couched under this attempt.'

'That's true,' cried the old man, ever ready to regard himself as the object of some secret malevolence. 'You cannot remember this rebel's name, can you?'

'It was Daniel something--that's all I know.'

A long, fine whistle was Kearney's rejoinder, and after a second or two he said, 'I can trust you, Gorman; and I may tell you they may be not so great fools as I took them for. Not that I was harbouring the fellow, mind you; but there came a college friend of d.i.c.k's here a few days back--a clever fellow he was, and knew Ireland well--and we called him Mr. Daniel, and it was but yesterday he left us and did not return. I have a notion now he was the head-centre they're looking for.'

'Do you know if he has left any baggage or papers behind him?'

'I know nothing about this whatever, nor do I know how far d.i.c.k was in his secret.'

'You will be cool and collected, I am sure, sir, when they come here with the search-warrant. You'll not give them even the pa.s.sing triumph of seeing that you are annoyed or offended?'

'That I will, my lad. I'm prepared now, and I'll take them as easy as if it was a morning call. Come in and have your breakfast with us, and say nothing about what we've been talking over.'

'Many thanks, sir, but I think--indeed I feel sure--I ought to go back at once. I have come here without my aunt's knowledge, and now that I have seen you and put you on your guard, I ought to go back as fast as I can.'