The Martins Of Cro' Martin Volume I Part 1

The Martins Of Cro' Martin.

Vol. I.

by Charles James Lever.

TO THE

REVEREND MORTIMER O'SULLIVAN, D.D.

If I have not asked your permission to dedicate this volume to you, it is because I would not involve you in the responsibility of any opinions even so light a production may contain, nor seek to cover by a great name the sentiment and views of a very humble one.

I cannot, however, deny myself the pleasure of inscribing to you a book to which I have given much thought and labor,--a testimony of the deep and sincere affection of one who has no higher pride than in the honor of your friends.h.i.+p.

Ever sincerely yours,

CHARLES LEVER

Casa Cappoli, Florence, May, 1856

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1872.

When I had made my arrangement with my publishers for this new story, I was not sorry for many reasons to place the scene of it in Ireland.

One of my late critics, in noticing "Roland Cashel" and "The Daltons,"

mildly rebuked me for having fallen into doubtful company, and half censured--in Bohemian--several of the characters in these novels. I was not then, still less am I now, disposed to argue the point with my censor, and show that there is a very wide difference between the persons who move in the polite world, with a very questionable morality, and those patented adventurers whose daily existence is the product of daily address. The more one sees of life, the more is he struck by the fact that the ma.s.s of mankind is rarely very good or very bad, that the business of life is carried on with mixed motives; the best people being those who are least selfish, and the worst being little other than those who seek their own objects with slight regard for the consequences to others, and even less scruple as to the means.

Any uniformity in good or evil would be the deathblow to that genteel comedy which goes on around us, and whose highest interest very often centres in the surprises we give ourselves by unexpected lines of action and unlooked-for impulses. As this strange drama unfolded itself before me, it had become a pa.s.sion with me to watch the actors, and speculate on what they might do. For this Florence offered an admirable stage.

It was eminently cosmopolitan; and, in consequence, less under the influence of any distinct code of public opinion than any section of the several nationalities I might have found at home.

There was a universal toleration abroad; and the Spaniard conceded to the German, and the Russian to the Englishman, much on the score of nationality; and did not question too closely a morality which, after all, might have been little other than a conventional habit. Exactly in the same way, however, that one hurries away from the life of a city and its dissipations, to breathe the fresh air and taste the delicious quiet of the country, did I turn from these scenes of splendor, from the crush of wealth, and the conflict of emotion, to that Green Island, where so many of my sympathies were intertwined, and where the great problem of human happiness was on its trial on issues that differed wonderfully little from those that were being tried in gilded salons, and by people whose names were blazoned in history.

Ireland, at the time I speak of, was beginning to feel that sense of distrust and jealousy between the owner and the tiller of the soil which, later on, was to develop itself into open feud. The old ties that have bound the humble to the rich man, and which were hallowed by reciprocal acts of good-will and benevolence, were being loosened.

Benefits were canva.s.sed with suspicion, ungracious or unholy acts were treasured up as cruel wrongs. The political agitator had so far gained the ear of the people, that he could persuade them that there was not a hards.h.i.+p or a grievance of their lot that could not be laid at the door of the landlord. He was taught to regard the old relation of love and affection to the owner of the soil, as the remnants of a barbarism that had had its day, and he was led to believe that whether the tyranny that crushed him was the Established Church or the landlord, there was a great Liberal party ready to aid him in resisting either or both, when he could summon courage for the effort. By what promptings the poor man was brought to imagine that a reign of terror would suffice to establish him in an undisputed possession of the soil, and that the best lease was a loaded musket, it is not either my wish nor my duty here to narrate; I only desire to call my reader's attention to the time itself, as a transition period when the peasant had begun to resent some of the ties that had bound him to his landlord, and had not yet conceived the idea of that formidable conspiracy which issues its death-warrants and never is at a loss for the agents to enforce them. There were at the time some who, seeing the precarious condition of the period, had their grave forebodings of what was to come, when further estrangement between the two cla.s.ses was accomplished, and the poor man should come to see in the rich only an oppressor and a tyrant. There was not at that time the armed resistance to rents, nor the threatening letter system to which we were afterwards to become accustomed, still less was there the thought that the Legislature would interfere to legalize the demands by which the tenant was able to coerce his landlord; and for a brief interval there did seem a possibility of reuniting once again, by the ties of benefit and grat.i.tude, the two cla.s.ses whose real welfare depends on concord and harmony. I have not the shadow of a pretext to be thought didactic, but I did believe that if I recalled in fiction some of the traits which once had bound up the relations of rich and poor, and given to our social system many of the characteristics of the family, I should be reviving pleasant memories if not doing something more.

To this end I sketched the character of Mary Martin. By making the opening of my story date from the time of the Relief Bill, I intended to picture the state of the country at one of the most memorable eras in its history, and when an act of the Legislature a.s.sumed to redress inequalities, compose differences, and allay jealousies of centuries'

growth, and make of two widely differing races one contented people.

I had not, I own, any implicit faith in Acts of Parliament, and I had a fervent belief in what kindness--when combined with knowledge of Ireland--could do with Irishmen. I have never heard of a people with whom sympathy could do so much, nor the want of it be so fatal. I have never heard of any other people to whom the actual amount of a benefit was of less moment than the mode it was bestowed. I have never read of a race who, in great poverty and many privations, attach a higher value to the consideration that is bestowed on them than to the actual material boons, and feel such a seemingly disproportioned grat.i.tude for kind words and generous actions.

What might not be antic.i.p.ated from a revulsion of sentiment in a people like this, to what violence might not this pa.s.sion for vengeance be carried, if the notion possessed them that they, whom she called her betters, only traded on the weakness of their poverty and the imbecility of their good faith? It was in a fruitful soil of this kind that the agitation now sowed the seeds of distrust and disorder; and with what fatal rapidity the poison reproduced itself and spread, the history of late years is the testimony.

If such traits as I have endeavored to picture in Mary Martin were engaged in the work of benevolence tomorrow, they would be met on every side by discouragement and defeat. The priest would denounce them as a propaganda artfully intended to sap the ancient faith of the people; the agitators would denounce them as the cunning flatteries of political solicitation; the people themselves would distrust them as covering some secret object; and the National Press would be certain to utter its warnings against whatever promised to establish peace or contentment to the land.

I have said already, and I repeat it here, that this character of Mary Martin is purely fict.i.tious; and there is the more need I should say it, since there was once a young lady of this very name,--many traits of whose affection for the people and efforts for their well being might be supposed to have been my original. To my great regret I never had the happiness to have met her; however, I have heard much of her devotion and her goodness.

I am not sure that some of my subordinate characters were not drawn from life. Mrs. Nelligan, I remember, had her type in a little Galway town I once stopped at, and Dan Nelligan had much in common with one who has since held a distinguished place on the Bench.

Of the terrible epidemic which devastated Ireland, there was much for which I drew on my own experience. Of its fearful ravages in the west, in the wilds of Clare, and that lonely promontory that stretches at the mouth of the Shannon into the Atlantic, I had been the daily witness; and even to recall some of the incidents pa.s.singly was an effort of great pain.

Of one feature of the people at this disastrous time, I could not say enough; nor could any words of mine do justice to the splendid heroism with which they bore up, and the n.o.ble generosity they showed each other in misfortune. It is but too often remarked how selfish men are made by misery, and how fatal is a common affliction to that charity that cares for others. There was none of this here; I never in any condition or cla.s.s recognized more traits of thoughtful kindness and self-denial than I did amongst these poor, famished, and forgotten people. I never witnessed in the same perfection, how a widespread affliction could call up a humanity great as itself, and make very commonplace natures something actually heroic and glorious.

Nothing short of the fatal tendency I have to digression, and the watchful care I am bound to bestow against this fault, prevented me from narrating several incidents with which my own experience had made me acquainted. Foreign as these were to the burden of my tale, it was only by an effort I overcame the temptation to recall them.

If a nation is to be judged by her bearing under calamity, Ireland--and she has had some experiences--comes well through the ordeal. That we may yet see how she will sustain her part in happier circ.u.mstances is my hope and my prayer, and that the time be not too far off.

CHARLES LEVER.

Trieste, 1872.

THE MARTINS OF CRO' MARTIN.

CHAPTER I. CRO' MARTIN

I am about to speak of Ireland as it was some four-and-twenty years ago, and feel as if I were referring to a long-past period of history, such have been the changes, political and social, effected in that interval!

Tempting, as in some respects might be an investigation into the causes of these great changes, and even speculation as to how they might have been modified and whither they tend, I prefer rather to let the reader form his own unaided judgment on such matters, and will therefore, without more of preface, proceed to my story.

If the traveller leaves the old town of Oughterard, and proceeds westward, he enters a wild and dreary region, with few traces of cultivation, and with scarcely an inhabitant. Bare, bleak mountains, fissured by many a torrent, bound plains of stony surface,--here and there the miserable hut of some "cottier," with its poor effort at tillage, in the shape of some roods of wet potato land, or the sorry picture of a stunted oat crop, green even in the late autumn. Gradually, however, the scene becomes less dreary. Little patches of gra.s.s land come into view, generally skirting some small lake; and here are to be met with droves of those wild Connemara ponies for which the district is so celebrated; a stunted hardy race, with all the endurance and courage that beseem a mountain origin. Further on, the grateful sight of young timber meets the eye, and large enclosures of larch and spruce fir are seen on every favorable spot of ground. And at length, on winding round the base of a steep mountain, the deep woods of a rich demesne appear, and soon afterwards a handsome entrance-gate of ma.s.sive stone, with armorial bearings above it, announces the approach to Cro' Martin Castle, the ancient seat of the Martins.

An avenue of several miles in length, winding through scenery of the most varied character, at one time traversing rich lawns of waving meadow, at another tracking its course along some rocky glen, or skirting the bank of a clear and rapid river, at length arrives at the castle. With few pretensions to architectural correctness, Cro' Martin was, indeed, an imposing structure. Originally the stronghold of some bold Borderer, it had been added to by successive proprietors, till at last it had a.s.sumed the proportions of a vast and s.p.a.cious edifice, different eras contributing the different styles of building, and presenting in the ma.s.s traces of every architecture, from the stern old watch-tower of the fourteenth century to the commodious dwelling-house of our own.

If correct taste might take exception to many of the external details of this building, the arrangements within doors, where all that elegance and comfort could combine were to be found, might safely challenge criticism. Costly furniture abounded, not for show in state apartments, shrouded in canvas, or screened from sunlight, but for daily use in rooms that showed continual habitation.

Some of the apartments displayed ma.s.sive specimens of that richly carved old oak furniture for which the chateaux of the Low Countries were famed; others abounded with inlaid consoles and costly tables of "marqueterie," and others again exhibited that chaste white and gold which characterized the splendid era of the Regency in France. Great jars of Sevres, those splendid mockeries of high art, stood in the windows, whose curtains were of the heaviest brocade. Carpets of soft Persian wool covered the floors, and rich tapestries were thrown over sofas and chairs with a careless grace, the very triumph of picturesque effect.

In the scrupulous neatness of all these arrangements, in the orderly air, the demure and respectful bearing of the servants as they showed the castle to strangers, one might read the traces of a strict and rigid discipline,--features, it must be owned, that seemed little in accordance with the wild region that stretched on every side. The spotless windows of plate-gla.s.s, the polished floor that mirrored every chair that stood on it, the ma.s.sive, and well-fitting doors, the richly gilded dogs that shone within the marble hearth, had little brotherhood with the dreary dwellings of the cottiers beyond the walls of the park; and certainly even Irish misery never was more conspicuous than in that lonely region.

It was early on a calm morning of the late autumn that the silent courtyard of the castle resounded with the sharp quick tramp of a horse, suddenly followed by a loud shrill whistle, as a young girl, mounted upon a small but highly bred horse, galloped up to one of the back entrances. Let us employ the few seconds in which she thus awaited, to introduce her to the reader. Somewhat above the middle size, and with a figure admirably proportioned, her face seemed to blend the joyous character of happy girlhood with a temperament of resolute action. The large and liquid hazel eyes, with their long dark fringes, were almost at variance with the expression of the mouth, which, though finely and beautifully fas.h.i.+oned, conveyed the working of a spirit that usually followed its own dictates, and as rarely brooked much interference.

Shaded by a broad-leaved black hat, and with a braid of her dark auburn hair accidentally fallen on her shoulder, Mary Martin sat patting the head of the wire-haired greyhound who had reared himself to her side,--a study for Landseer himself. Scarcely above a minute had elapsed, when several servants were seen running towards her, whose hurried air betrayed that they had only just risen from bed.

"You're all very late to-day," cried the young lady. "You should have been in the stables an hour ago. Where 's Brand?"

"He 's gone into the fair, miss, with a lot of hoggets," said a little old fellow with a rabbit-skin cap, and a most unmistakable groom formation about the knees and ankles.

"Look to the mare, Barny," said she, jumping off; "and remind me, if I forget it, to fine you all, for not having fed and watered before six o'clock. Yes, I 'll do it; I said so once before, and you 'll see I 'll keep my word. Is it because my uncle goes a few weeks to the seaside, that you are to neglect your duty? Hackett, I shall want to see the colts presently; go round to the straw-yard and wait till I come; and, Graft, let us have a look at the garden, for my aunt is quite provoked at the flowers you have been sending her lately."

All this was said rapidly, and in a tone that evidently was not meant to admit of reply; and the gardener led the way, key in hand, very much with the air of a felon going to conviction. He was a Northern Irishman, however, and possessed the Scotch-like habits of prudent reserve that never wasted a word in a bad cause. And thus he suffered himself to be soundly rated upon various short-comings in his department,--celery that wanted landing; asparagus grown to the consistence of a walking-cane; branches of fruit-trees breaking under their weight of produce; and even weed-grown walks,--all were there, and upon all was he arraigned.

"The old story, of course, Graft," said she, slapping her foot impatiently with her riding-whip,--"you have too few people in the garden; but my remedy will be to lessen their number. Now mark me. My uncle is coming home on Wednesday next,--just so--a full month earlier than you expected,--and if the garden be not in perfect order,--if I find one of these things I have complained of to-day--"

"But, my leddy, this is the season when, what wi' sellin' the fruit, and what wi' the new shoots--"

"I 'll have it done, that 's all, Mr. Graft; and you 'll have one man less to do it with. I 'll go over the hothouse after breakfast," said she, smiling to herself at the satisfaction with which he evidently heard this short reprieve. Nor was he himself more anxious to escape censure than was she to throw off the ungracious office of inflicting it.