The door into the anteroom where I was waiting stood half-open, and I heard a very imperious voice say, “Tell Mr. Gosslett it is impossible,—quite impossible! There are above three hundred applicants, and I believe he is about the least suitable amongst them.” A meek-looking young gentleman came out after this; and, closing the door cautiously, said, “My Lord regrets extremely, Mr. Gosslett, that you should have been so late in forwarding your testimonials. He has already filled the place; but if another vacancy occurs, his Lordship will bear your claims in mind.”
I bowed in silent indignation, and withdrew. How I wished there had been any great meeting, any popular gathering, near me at that moment, that I might go down and denounce, with all the force of a wounded and insulted spirit, the insolence of office and the tyranny of the place-holder! With what withering sarcasm I would have flayed those parasites of certain great houses who, without deserts of their own, regard every office under the Crown as their just prerogative! Who was Henry Lord Scatterdale that he should speak thus of Paul Gosslett? What evidences of ability had he given to the world? What illustrious proofs of high capacity as a minister, that he should insult one of those who, by the declared avowal of his party, are the bone and sinew of England? Let Beales only call another meeting, and shall I not be there to expose these men to the scorn and indignation of the country? Down with the whole rotten edifice of pampered menials and corrupt place-men,—down with families patented to live on the nation,—down with a system which perpetuates the worst intrigues that ever disgraced and demoralized a people,—a system worse than the corrupt rule of the Bourbons of Naples, and more degrading than—
“Now, stoopid!” cried a cabman, as one of his shafts struck me on the shoulder, and sent me spinning into an apple-stall.
I recovered my legs, and turned homewards to my lodgings in a somewhat more subdued spirit.
“Please, sir,” said a dirty maid-of-all-work, entering my room after me, “Mrs. Mechim says the apartment is let to another gentleman after Monday, and please begs you have to pay one pound fourteen and threepence, sir.”
“I know, I know,” said I, impatiently.
“Yes, sir,” replied the smutty face, still standing in the same place.
“Well, I have told you I know all that. You have got your answer, haven't you?”
“Please yes, sir, but not the money.”
“Leave the room,” said I, haughtily; and my grand imperious air had its success, for I believe she suspected I was a little deranged.
I locked the door to be alone with my own thoughts, and, opening my writing-desk, I spread before me four sovereigns and some silver. “Barely my funeral expenses,” said I, bitterly. I leaned my head on my hand, and fell into a mood of sad thought. I was n't a bit of a poet. I could n't have made three lines of verse had you given me a million for it; but somehow I bethought me of Chatterton in his garret, and said to myself, “Like him, poor Gosslett sunk, famished in the midst of plenty,—a man in all the vigor of youth, able, active, and energetic, with a mind richly gifted, and a heart tender as a woman's.” I could n't go on. I blubbered out into a fit of crying that nearly choked me.
“Please, sir,” said the maid, tapping at the door, “the gentleman in the next room begs you not to laugh so loud.”
“Laugh!” burst I out. “Tell him, woman, to take care and be present at the inquest. His evidence will be invaluable.” As I spoke, I threw myself on my bed, and fell soon after into a sound sleep.
When I woke, it was night. The lamps were lighted in the street, and a small, thin rain was falling, blurring the gas-flame, and making everything look indistinct and dreary. I sat at the window and looked out, I know not how long. The world was crape-covered to me; not a thought of it that was not dark and dismal. I tried to take a retrospect of my life, and see where and how I might have done better; but all I could collect was, that I had met nothing but ingratitude and injustice, while others, with but a tithe of my capacity, had risen to wealth and honor. I, fated to evil from my birth, fought my long fight with fortune, and sank at last, exhausted. “I wonder will any one ever say, 'Poor Gosslett'? I wonder will there be—even late though it be—one voice to declare, 'That was no common man! Gosslett, in any country but our own, would have been distinguished and honored. To great powers of judgment he united a fancy rich, varied, and picturesque; his temperament was poetic, but his reasoning faculties asserted the mastery over his imagination '? Will they be acute enough to read me thus? Will they know,—in one word,—will they know the man they have suffered to perish in the midst of them?” My one gleam of comfort was the unavailing regret I should leave to a world that had neglected me. “Yes,” said I, bitterly, “weep on, and cease not.”
I made a collection of all my papers,—some of them very curious indeed,—stray fragments of my life,—brief jottings of my opinions on the current topics of the day. I sealed these carefully up, and began to bethink me whom I should appoint my literary executor. I had not the honor of his acquaintance, but how I wished I had known Martin Tupper! There were traits in that man's writings that seemed to vibrate in the closer chambers of my heart. While others gave you words and phrases, he gave you the outgushings of a warm nature,—the overflowings of an affectionate heart. I canvassed long with myself whether a stranger might dare to address him, and prefer such a request as mine; but I could not summon courage to take the daring step.
After all, thought I, a man's relatives are his natural heirs. My mother's sister had married a Mr. Morse, who had retired from business, and settled down in a cottage near Rochester. He had been “in rags”—I mean the business of that name—for forty years, and made a snug thing of it; but, by an unlucky speculation, had lost more than half of his savings. Being childless, and utterly devoid of affection for any one, he had purchased an annuity on the joint lives of his wife and himself, and retired to pass his days near his native town.
I never liked him, nor did he like me. He was a hard, stern, coarse-natured man, who thought that any one who had ever failed in anything was a creature to be despised, and saw nothing in want of success but an innate desire to live in indolence, and be supported by others. He often asked me why I did n't turn coal-heaver? He said he would have been a coal-heaver rather than be dependent upon his relations.
My aunt might originally have been somewhat softer-natured, but time and association had made her very much like my uncle. Need I say that I saw little of them, and never, under any circumstances, wrote a line to either of them?
I determined I would go down and see them, and, not waiting for morning nor the rail, that I would go on foot. It was raining torrents by this time, but what did I care for that? When the ship was drifting on the rocks, what mattered a leak more or less?
It was dark night when I set out; and when day broke, dim and dreary, I was soaked thoroughly through, and not more than one-fifth of the way. There was, however, that in the exercise, and in the spirit it called forth, to rally me out of my depression; and I plodded along through mud and mire, breasting the swooping rain in a far cheerier frame than I could have thought possible. It was closing into darkness as I reached the little inn where the cottage stood, and I was by this time fairly beat between fatigue and hunger.
“Here's a go!” cried my uncle, who opened the door for me. “Here's Paul Gosslett, just as we're going to dinner.”
“The very time to suit him,” said I, trying to be jocular.
“Yes, lad, but will it suit us? We 've only an Irish stew, and not too much of it, either.”
“How are you, Paul?” said my aunt, offering her hand. “You seem wet through. Won't you dry your coat?”
“Oh, it's no matter,” said I. “I never mind wet.”
“Of course he does n't,” said my uncle. “What would he do if he was up at the 'diggins'? What would he do if he had to pick rags as I have, ten, twelve hours at a stretch, under heavier rain than this?”
“Just so, sir,” said I, concurring with all he said.
“And what brought you down, lad?” asked he.
“I think, sir, it was to see you and my aunt. I haven't been very well of late, and I fancied a day in the country might rally me.”
“Stealing a holiday,—the old story,” muttered he. “Are you doing anything now?”
“No, sir. I have unfortunately nothing to do.”
“Why not go on the quay then, and turn coal-heaver? I 'd not eat bread of another man's earning when I could carry a sack of coals. Do you understand that?”
“Perhaps I do, sir; but I'm scarcely strong enough to be a coal-porter.”
“Sell matches, then,—lucifer matches!” cried he, with a bang of his hand on the table, “or be a poster.”
“Oh, Tom!” cried my aunt, who saw that I had grown first red, and then sickly pale all over.
“As good men as he have done both. But here's the dinner, and I suppose you must have your share of it.”
I was in no mood to resent this invitation, discourteous as it was, for I was in no mood to resent anything. I was crushed and humbled to a degree that I began to regard my abject condition as a martyr might his martyrdom.
The meal went over somewhat silently; little was spoken on any side. A half-jocular remark on the goodness of my appetite was the only approach to a pleasantry. My uncle drank something which by the color I judged to be port, but he neither offered it to my aunt nor myself. She took water, and I drank largely of beer, which once more elicited a compliment to me on my powers of suction.
“Better have you for a week than a fortnight, lad,” said my uncle, as we drew round the fire after dinner.
My aunt now armed herself with some knitting apparatus, while my uncle, flanked by a smoking glass of toddy on one side and the “Tizer” on the other, proceeded to fill his pipe with strong tobacco, puffing out at intervals short and pithy apothegms about youth being the season for work and age for repose,—under the influence of whose drowsy wisdom, and overcome by the hot fire, I fell off fast asleep. For a while I was so completely lost in slumber that I heard nothing around. At last I began to dream of my long journey, and the little towns I had passed through, and the places I fain would have stopped at to bait and rest, but nobly resisted, never breaking bread nor tasting water till I had reached my journey's end. At length I fancied I heard people calling me by my name, some saying words of warning or caution, and others jeering and bantering me; and then quite distinctly,—as clearly as though the words were in my ear,—I heard my aunt say,—“I'm sure Lizzy would take him. She was shamefully treated by that heartless fellow, but she's getting over it now; and if any one, even Paul there, offered, I 'm certain she 'd not refuse him.”
“She has a thousand pounds,” grunted out my uncle.
“Fourteen hundred in the bank; and as they have no other child, they must leave her everything they have, when they die.”
“It won't be much. Old Dan has little more than his vicarage, and he always ends each year a shade deeper in debt than the one before it.”
“Well, she has her own fortune, and nobody can touch that.”
I roused myself, yawned aloud, and opened my eyes.
“Pretty nigh as good a hand at sleeping as eating,” said my uncle, gruffly.
“It's a smart bit of a walk from Duke Street, Piccadilly,” said I, with more vigor than I had yet assumed.
“Why, a fellow of your age ought to do that twice a week just to keep him in wind.”
“I say, Paul,” said my aunt, “were you ever in Ireland?”
“Never, aunt. Why do you ask me?”
“Because you said a little while back that you felt rather poorly of late,—low and weakly.”
“No loss of appetite, though,” chuckled in my uncle.
“And we were thinking,” resumed she, “of sending you over to stay a few weeks with an old friend of ours in Donegal. He calls it the finest air in Europe; and I know he 'd treat you with every kindness.”
“Do you shoot?” asked my uncle.
“No, sir.”
“Nor fish?”
“No, sir.”
“What are you as a sportsman? Can you ride? Can you do anything?”
“Nothing whatever, sir. I once carried a game-bag, and that was all.”
“And you're not a farmer nor a judge of cattle. How are you to pass your time, I 'd like to know?”
“If there were books, or if there were people to talk to—”
“Mrs. Dudgeon's deaf,—she's been deaf these twenty years; but she has a daughter. Is Lizzy deaf?”
“Of course she's not,” rejoined my aunt, tartly.
“Well, she'd talk to you; and Dan would talk. Not much, I believe, though; he a'n't a great fellow for talk.”
“They 're something silent all of them, but Lizzy is a nice girl and very pretty,—at least she was when I saw her here two years ago.”
“At all events, they are distant connections of your mother's; and as you are determined to live on your relations, I think you ought to give them a turn.”
“There is some justice in that, sir,” said I, determined now to resent no rudeness, nor show offence at any coarseness, however great it might be.
“Well, then, I 'll write to-morrow, and say you 'll follow my letter, and be with them soon after they receive it. I believe it's a lonely sort of place enough,—Dan calls it next door to Greenland; but there's good air, and plenty of it.”
We talked for some time longer over the family whose guest I was to be, and I went off to bed, determined to see out this new act of my life's drama before I whistled for the curtain to drop.
It gave a great additional interest besides to my journey to have overheard the hint my aunt threw out about a marriage. It was something more than a mere journey for change of air. It might be a journey to change the whole character and fortune of my life. And was it not thus one's fate ever turned? You went somewhere by a mere accident, or you stopped at home. You held a hand to help a lady into a boat, or you assisted her off her horse, or you took her in to dinner; and out of something insignificant and trivial as this your whole life's destiny was altered. And not alone your destiny, but your very nature; your temper, as fashioned by another's temper; your tastes as moulded by others' tastes; and your morality, your actual identity, was the sport of a casualty too small and too poor to be called an incident.
“Is this about to be the turning-point in my life?” asked I of myself. “Is Fortune at last disposed to bestow a smile upon me? Is it out of the very depth of my despair I 'm to catch sight of the first gleam of light that has fallen upon my luckless career?”
My plan of procedure was to be this. I was supposed to be making a tour in Ireland, when, hearing of certain connections of my mother's family living in Donegal, I at once wrote to my uncle Morse for an introduction to them, and he not only provided me with a letter accrediting me, but wrote by the same post to the Dudgeons to say I was sure to pay them a visit.
On arriving in Dublin I was astonished to find so much that seemed unlike what I had left behind me. That intense preoccupation, that anxious eager look of business so remarkable in Liverpool, was not to be found here. If the people really were busy, they went about their affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn't be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they had anything else to do,—as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as possible to the pleasanter occupations of life.
Such was the aspect of things on the quays. The same look pervaded the Exchange, and the same air of little to do, and of deeming it a joke while doing it, abounded in the law courts, where the bench exchanged witty passages with the bar; and the prisoners, the witnesses, and the jury fired smart things at each other with a seeming geniality and enjoyment that were very remarkable. I was so much amused by all I saw, that I would willingly have delayed some days in the capital; but my uncle had charged me to present myself at the vicarage without any unnecessary delay; so I determined to set out at once. I was not, I shame to own, much better up in the geography of Ireland than in that of Central Africa, and had but a very vague idea whither I was going.
“Do you know Donegal?” asked I of the waiter, giving to my pronunciation of the word a long second and a short third syllable.
“No, your honor, never heard of him,” was the answer.
“But it's a place I'm asking for,—a county,” said I, with some impatience.
“Faix, maybe it is,” said he; “but it's new to me, all the same.”
“He means Donegal,” said a red-whiskered man with a bronzed weather-beaten face, and a stern defiant air, that invited no acquaintanceship.
“Oh, Donegal,” chimed in the waiter. “Begorra! it would n't be easy to know it by the name your honor gav' it.”
“Are you looking for any particular place in that county?” asked the stranger in a tone sharp and imperious as his former speech.
“Yes,” said I, assuming a degree of courtesy that I thought would be the best rebuke to his bluntness; “but I 'll scarcely trust myself with the pronunciation after my late failure. This is the place I want;” and I drew forth my uncle's letter and showed the address.
“Oh, that's it, is it?” cried he, reading aloud. “'The Reverend Daniel Dudgeon, Killyrotherum, Donegal.' And are you going there? Oh, I see you are,” said he, turning his eyes to the foot of the address. '“Favored by Paul Gosslett, Esq.' and you are Paul Gosslett.”
“Yes, sir, with your kind permission, I am Paul Gosslett,” said I, with what I hoped was a chilling dignity of manner.
“If it's only my permission you want, you may be anything you please,” said he, turning his insolent stare full on me.
I endeavored not to show any sensitiveness to this impertinence, and went on with my dinner, the stranger's table being quite close to mine.
“It's your first appearance in Ireland, I suspect,” said he, scanning me as he picked his teeth, and sat carelessly with one leg crossed over the other.
I bowed a silent acquiescence, and he went on. “I declare that I believe a Cockney, though he has n't a word of French, is more at home on the Continent than in Ireland.” He paused for some expression of opinion on my part, but I gave none. I filled my glass, and affected to admire the color of the wine, and sipped it slowly, like one thoroughly engaged in his own enjoyments.
“Don't you agree with me?” asked he, fiercely.
“Sir, I have not given your proposition such consideration as would entitle me to say I concur with it or not.”
“That's not it at all!” broke he in, with an insolent laugh; “but you won't allow that you 're a Cockney.”
“I protest, sir,” said I, sternly; “I have yet to learn that I 'm bound to make a declaration of my birth, parentage, and education to the first stranger I sit beside in a coffee-room.”
“No, you 're not,—nothing of the kind,—for it's done for you. It 's done in spite of you, when you open your mouth. Did n't you see the waiter running out of the room with the napkin in his mouth when you tried to say Donegal? Look here, Paul,” said he, drawing his chair confidentially towards my table. “We don't care a rush what you do with your H's, or your W's, either; but, if we can help it, we won't have our national names miscalled. We have a pride in them, and we 'll not suffer them to be mutilated or disfigured. Do you understand me now?”
“Sufficiently, sir, to wish you a very good-night,” said I, rising from the table, and leaving my pint of sherry, of which I had only drunk one glass.
As I closed the coffee-room door, I thought—indeed, I 'm certain—I heard a loud roar of laughter.
“'Who is that most agreeable gentleman I sat next at dinner?” asked I of the waiter.
“Counsellor MacNamara, sir. Isn't he a nice man?”
“A charming person,” said I.
“I wish you heard him in the coort, sir. By my conscience, a witness has a poor time under him! He 'd humbug you if you was an archbishop.”
“Call me at five,” said I, passing up the stairs, and impatient to gain my room and be alone with my indignation.
I passed a restless, feverish night, canvassing with myself whether I would not turn back and leave forever a country whose first aspect was so forbidding and unpromising. What stories had I not heard of Irish courtesy to strangers,—Irish wit and Irish pleasantry! Was this, then, a specimen of that captivating manner which makes these people the French of Great Britain? Why, this fellow was an unmitigated savage!
Having registered a vow not to open my lips to a stranger till I reached the end of my journey, and to affect deafness rather than be led into conversation, I set off the next day, by train, for Derry. True to my resolve, I only uttered the word “beer” till I arrived in the evening. The next day I took the steamer to a small village called Cushnagorra, from whence it was only ten miles by a good mountain-road to Killyrotherum Bay. I engaged a car to take me on, and at last found myself able to ask a few questions without the penalty of being cross-examined by an impertinent barrister, and being made the jest of a coffee-room.
I wanted to learn something about the people to whose house I was going, and asked Pat, accordingly, if he knew Mr. Dudgeon.
“Troth I do, sir, well,” said he.
“He's a good kind of man, I'm told,” said I.
“He is, indeed, sir; no betther.”
“Kind to the poor, and charitable?”
“Thrue for you; that's himself.”
“And his family is well liked down here?”
“I'll be bound they are. There's few like them to the fore.”
Rather worried by the persistent assent he gave me, and seeing that I had no chance of deriving anything like an independent opinion from my courteous companion, I determined to try another line. After smoking a cigar and giving one to my friend, who seemed to relish it vastly, I said, as if incidentally, “Where I got that cigar, Paddy, the people are better off than here.”
“And where's that, sir?”
“In America, in the State of Virginia.”
“That's as thrue as the Bible. It's elegant times they have there.”
“And one reason is,” said I, “every man can do what he likes with his own. You have a bit of land here, and you dare n't plant tobacco; or if you sow oats or barley, you must n't malt it. The law says, 'You may do this, and you sha'n't do that;' and is that freedom, I ask, or is it slavery?”
“Slavery,—devil a less,” said he, with a cut of his whip that made the horse plunge into the air.
“And do you know why that's done? Do you know the secret of it all?”
“Sorra a bit o' me.”
“I'll tell you, then. It's to keep up the Church; it's to feed the parsons that don't belong to the people,—that's what they put the taxes on tobacco and whiskey for. What, I 'd like to know, do you and I want with that place there with the steeple? What does the Rev. Daniel Dudgeon do for you or me? Grind us,—squeeze us,—maybe, come down on us when we 're trying to scrape a few shillings together, and carry it off for tithes.”
“Shure and he's a hard man! He's taking the herrins out of the net this year,—for every ten herrins he takes one.”
“And do they bear that?”
“Well, they do,” said he, mournfully; “they've no spirit down here; but over at Muggle-na-garry they put slugs in one last winter.”
“One what?”
“A parson, your honor; and it did him a dale o' good. He 's as meek as a child now about his dues, and they 've no trouble with him in life.”
“They'll do that with Dudgeon yet, maybe?” asked I.
“With the Lord's blessing, sir,” said he, piously.
Satisfied now that it was not a very hopeful task to obtain much information about Ireland from such a source, I drew my hat over my eyes and affected to doze for the remainder of the journey.
We arrived, at length, at the foot of a narrow road, impassable by the car, and here the driver told me I must descend and make the rest of my way on foot.
“The house wasn't far,” he said; “only over the top of the hill in front of me,—about half-a-quarter of a mile away.”
Depositing my portmanteau under a clump of furze, I set out,—drearily enough, I will own. The scene around me, for miles, was one of arid desolation. It was not that no trace of human habitation, nor of any living creature was to be seen, but that the stony, shingly soil, totally destitute of all vegetation, seemed to deny life to anything. The surface rose and fell in a monotonous undulation, like a great sea suddenly petrified, while here and there some greater boulders represented those mighty waves which in the ocean seem to assert supremacy over their fellows.
At last I gained the crest of the ridge, and could see the Atlantic, which indented the shore beneath into many a little bay and inlet; but it was some time ere I could distinguish a house which stood in a narrow cleft of the mountain, and whose roof, kept down by means of stones and rocks, had at first appeared to me as a part of the surface of the soil. The strong wind almost carried me off my legs on this exposed ridge; so, crouching down, I began my descent, and after half an hour's creeping and stumbling, I reached a little enclosed place, where stood the house. It was a long, one-storied building, with cow-house and farm-offices under the same roof. The hall-door had been evidently long in disuse, since it was battened over with strong planks, and secured, besides, against the northwest wind by a rough group of rocks. Seeing entrance to be denied on this side, I made for the rear of the house, where a woman, beating flax under a shed, at once addressed me civilly, and ushered me into the house.
“His riv'rence is in there,” said she, pointing to a door, and leaving me to announce myself. I knocked, and entered. It was a small room, with an antiquated fireplace, at which the parson and his wife and daughter were seated,—-he reading a very much-crumpled newspaper, and they knitting.
“Oh, this is Mr. Gosslett. How are you, sir?” asked Mr. Dudgeon, seizing and shaking my hand; while his wife said, “We were just saying we 'd send down to look after you. My daughter Lizzy, Mr. Gosslett.”
Lizzy smiled faintly, but did not speak. I saw, however, that she was a pretty, fair-haired girl, with delicate features and a very gentle expression.
“It's a wild bit of landscape here, Mr. Gosslett; but of a fine day, with the sun on it, and the wind not so strong, it's handsome enough.”
“It 's grand,” said I, rather hesitating to find the epithet I wanted.
Mrs. D. sighed, and I thought her daughter echoed it; but as his reverence now bustled away to send some one to fetch my trunk, I took my place at the fire, and tried to make myself at home.
A very brief conversation enabled me to learn that Mr. Dudgeon came to the parish on his marriage, about four-and-twenty years before, and neither he nor his wife had ever left it since. They had no neighbors, and only six parishioners of their own persuasion. The church was about a mile off, and not easily approached in bad weather. It seemed, too, that the bishop and Mr. D. were always at war. The diocesan was a Whig, and the parson a violent Orangeman, who loved loyal anniversaries, demonstrations, and processions, the latter of which came twice or thrice a year from Derry to visit him and stir up any amount of bitterness and party strife; and though the Rev. Dan, as he was familiarly called, was obliged to pass the long interval between these triumphant exhibitions exposed to the insolence and outrage of the large masses he had offended, be never blinked the peril, but actually dared it, wearing his bit of orange ribbon in his button-hole as he went down the village, and meeting Father Lafferty's scowl with a look of defiance and insult fierce as his own.
After years of episcopal censure and reproof, administered without the slightest amendment,—for Dan never appeared at a visitation, and none were hardy enough to follow him into his fastness,—he was suffered to do what he pleased, and actually abandoned as one of those hopeless cases which time alone can clear off and remedy. An incident, however, which had befallen about a couple of years back, had almost released the bishop from his difficulty.
In an affray following on a twelfth of July demonstration, a man had been shot; and though the Rev. Dan was not in any degree implicated in the act, some imprudent allusion to the event in his Sunday's discourse got abroad in the press, and was so severely commented on by a young barrister on the trial, that an inhibition was issued against him, and his church closed for three months.
I have been, thus far, prolix in sketching the history of those with whom I was now to be domesticated, because, once placed before the reader, my daily life is easily understood. We sat over the fire nearly all day, abusing the Papists, and wondering if England would ever produce one man who could understand the fact that unless you banished the priests and threw down the chapels there was no use in making laws for Ireland.
Then we dined, usually on fish, and a bit of bacon, after which we drank the glorious, pious, and immortal memory, with the brass money, the wooden shoes, and the rest of it,—the mild Lizzy herself being “told off” to recite the toast, as her father had a sore throat and could n't utter; and the fair, gentle lips, that seldom parted save to smile, delivered the damnatory clause against all who would n't drink that toast, and sentenced them to be “rammed, jammed, and crammed,” as the act declares, in a way that actually amazed me.
If the peasant who drove me over to Killyrotherum did not add much to my knowledge of Ireland by the accuracy of his facts or the fixity of his opinions, the Rev. Dan assuredly made amends for all these shortcomings; for he saw the whole thing at a glance, and knew why Ireland was ungovernable, and how she could be made prosperous and happy, just as he knew how much poteen went to a tumbler of punch; and though occasionally despondent when the evening began, as it grew towards bedtime and the decanter waxed low, he had usually arrived at a glorious millennium, when every one wore an orange lily, and the whole world was employed in singing “Croppies lie down.”
I suppose I must be a very routine sort of creature, who loves to get into a groove and never leave it. Indeed, I recognize this feature of my disposition in the pleasure I feel in being left to myself, and my own humdrum way of diverting my time. At all events, I grew to like my life at Killyrotherum.
The monotony that would have driven most men to despair was to me soothing and grateful.
A breezy walk with Lizzy down to the village after breakfast, where she made whatever purchases the cares of household demanded, sufficed for exercise. After that I wrote a little in my own room,—short, jotting notes, that might serve to recall, on some future day, the scarcely tinted surface of my quiet existence, and occasionally putting down such points as puzzled me,—problems whose solution I must try to arrive at with time and opportunity. Perhaps a brief glance at the pages of this diary, as I open it at random, may serve to show how time went over with me.
Here is an entry:—
Friday, 17th November.—Mem., to find out from D. D. the exact explanation of his words last night, and which possibly fatigue may have made obscure to me. Is it Sir Wm. Vernon or the Pope who is Antichrist?
Query: also, would not brass money be better than no halfpence? and are not wooden shoes as good as bare feet?
Why does the parish clerk always bring up a chicken when he comes with a message?
Lizzy did not own she made the beefsteak dumpling, but the maid seemed to let the secret out by bringing in a little amethyst ring she had forgotten on the kitchen table. I wish she knew that I 'd be glad she could make dumplings. I am fond of dumplings. To try and tell her this.
Mrs. D. suspects Lizzy is attached to me. I don't think she approves of it. D. D. would not object if I became an Orangeman. Query, what effect would that have on my future career? Could I be an Orangeman without being able to sing the “Boyne Water”? for I never could hum a tune in my life. To inquire about this.
Who was the man who behaved badly to Lizzy? And how did he behave badly? This is a very vital point, though not easy to come at.
18th.—Lizzy likes—I may say loves—me. The avowal was made this morning, when I was carrying up two pounds of sugar and one of soap from the village. She said, “Oh, Mr. Gosslett, if you knew how unhappy I am!”
And I laid down the parcel, and, taking her hand in mine, said, “Darling, tell me all!” and she grew very red and flurried, and said, “Nonsense, don't be a fool! Take care Tobias don't run away with the soap. I wanted to confide in you, to trust you. I don't want to—” And there she fell a-crying, and sobbed all the way home, though I tried to console her as well as the basket would permit me. Mem.—Not to be led into any tendernesses till the marketing is brought home. Wonder does Lizzy require me to fight the man who behaved badly? What on earth was it he did?
A great discovery coming home from church to-day. D. D. asked me if I had detected anything in his sermon of that morning which I could possibly call violent, illiberal, or uncharitable. As I had not listened to it, I was the better able to declare that there was not a word of it I could object to. “Would you believe it, Gosslett,” said he,—and he never had called me Gosslett before,—“that was the very sermon they arraigned me for in the Queen's Bench; and that mild passage about the Virgin Mary, you 'd imagine it was murder I was instilling. You heard it to-day, and know if it's not true. Well, sir,” continued he, after a pause, “Tom MacNamara blackguarded me for twenty minutes on it before the whole court, screeching out, 'This is your parson! this is your instructor of the poor man! your Christian guide! your comforter! These are the teachings that are to wean the nation from bloodshed, and make men obedient to the law and grateful for its protection!' Why do you think he did this? Because I wouldn't give him my daughter,—a Papist rascal as he is! That's the whole of it. I published my sermon and sent it to the bishop, and he inhibited me! It was clear enough what he meant; he wanted to be made archbishop, and he knew what would please the Whigs. 'My Lord,' said I, 'these are the principles that placed the Queen on the throne of this realm. If it was n't to crush Popery he came, King William crossed the Boyne for nothing.'”
He went on thus till we reached home; but I had such a headache, from his loud utterance, that I had to lie down and sleep it off.
Monday, 31st.—A letter from Aunt Morse. Very dry and cold. Asks if I have sufficiently recovered from my late attack to be able to resume habits of activity and industry? Why, she knows well enough I have nothing to engage my activity and industry, for I will not be a coal-heaver, let uncle say what he likes. Aunt surmises that possibly some tender sentiment may be at the bottom of my attachment to Ireland, and sternly recalls me to the fact that I am not the possessor of landed property and an ancient family mansion in a good county. What can she mean by these warnings? Was it not herself that I overheard asking my uncle, “Would not he do for Lizzy?” How false women are! I wish I could probe that secret about the man that behaved ill; there are so many ways to behave ill, and to be behaved ill by. Shall I put a bold face on it, and ask Lizzy?
Great news has the post brought. Sir Morris Stamer is going out Lord High Commissioner to the Ionian Islands, and offers to take me as private sec.
It is a brilliant position, and one to marry on. I shall ask Lizzy to-day.
Wednesday, all settled;—but what have I not gone through these last three days! She loves me to distraction; but she 'll tell nothing,—nothing till we 're married. She says, and with truth, “confidence is the nurse of love.” I wish she was n't so coy. I have not even kissed her hand. She says Irish girls are all coy.
We are to run away, and be married at a place called Articlane. I don't know why we run away; but this is another secret I 'm to hear later on. Quiet and demure as she looks, Lizzy has a very decided disposition. She overbears all opposition, and has a peremptory way of saying, “Don't be a fool, G.!”—she won't call me Paul, only G.,—“and just do as I bade you.” I hope she 'll explain why this is so,—after our marriage.
I'm getting terribly afraid of the step we're about to take. I feel quite sure it was the Rev. Dan who shot the Papist on that anniversary affair; and I know he'd shoot me if he thought I had wronged him. Is there any way out of this embarrassment?
What a headache I have! We have been singing Orange songs for four hours. I think I hear that odious shake on the word “ba-a-t-tle,” as it rhymes to “rat—tie,” in old Dan's song. It goes through my brain still; and tomorrow, at daybreak, we're to run away! Lizzy's bundle is here, in my room; and Tom Ryan's boat is all ready under the rocks, and we're to cross the bay. It sounds very rash when one comes to think of it. I'm sure my Aunt Morse will never forgive it. But Lizzy, all so gentle and docile as she seems, has a very peremptory way with her; and as she promises to give me explanations for everything later on, I have agreed to all. How it blows! There has not been so bad a night since I came here. If it should be rough to-morrow morning, will she still insist on going? I 'm a poor sort of sailor at the best of times; but if there's a sea on, I shall be sick as a dog! And what a situation,—a seasick bridegroom running off with bis bride! That was a crash! I thought the old house was going clean away. The ploughs and harrows they 've put on the roof to keep the slates down perform very wild antics in a storm.
I suppose this is the worst climate in Europe. D. D. said, yesterday, that the length of the day made the only difference between summer and winter; and, oh dear! what an advantage does this confer on winter?
Now to bed,—though I'm afraid not to sleep; amid such a racket and turmoil, rest is out of the question. Who knows when, where, and how I shall make the next entry in this book? But, as Mr. Dudgeon says, when he finishes his tumbler, “Such is life! such is life!”
I wonder will Lizzy insist on going on if the weather continues like this? I'm sure no boatman with a wife and family could be fairly asked to go out in such a storm. I do not think I would have the right to induce a poor man to peril his life, and the support of those who depend upon him, for my own—what shall I call it?—my own gratification,—that might be for a picnic;—my own,—no, not happiness, because that is a term of time and continuity;—my own—There goes a chimney, as sure as fate! How they sleep here through everything! There 's that fellow who minds the cows snoring through it all in the loft overhead; and he might, for all he knew, have been squashed under that fall of masonry. Was that a tap at the door? I thought I heard it twice.
Yes, it was Lizzy. She had not been to bed. She went out as far as the church rock to see the sea. She says it was grander than she could describe. There is a faint moon, and the clouds are scudding along, as though racing against the waves below; but I refuse to go out and see it, all the same. I 'll turn in, and try to get some sleep before morning.
I was sound asleep, though the noise of the storm was actually deafening, when Lizzy again tapped at my door, and at last, opening it slightly, pushed a lighted candle inside, and disappeared. If there be a dreary thing in life, it is to get up before day of a dark, raw morning, in a room destitute of all comfort and convenience, and proceed to wash and dress in cold, gloom, and misery, with the consciousness that what you are about to do not only might be safer and better undone, but may, and not at all improbably will, turn out the rashest act of your life.
Over and over I said to myself, “If I were to tell her that I have a foreboding,—a distinct foreboding of calamity; that I dreamed a dream, and saw myself on a raft, while waves, mountain high, rose above me, and depths yawned beneath,—dark, fathomless, and terrible,—would she mind it?” I declare, on my sacred word of honor,—I declare I think she'd laugh at me!
“Are you ready?” whispered a soft voice at the door; and I saw at once my doom was pronounced.
Noiselessly, stealthily, we crept down the stairs, and, crossing the little flagged kitchen, undid the heavy bars of the door. Shall I own that a thought of treason shot through me as I stood with the great bolt in my hands, and the idea flashed across me, “What if I were to let it fall with a crash, and awake the household?” Did she divine what was passing in my head, as she silently took the bar from me, and put it away?
We were now in the open air, breasting a swooping nor'-wester that chilled the very marrow of my bones. She led the way through the dark night as though it were noonday, and I followed, tumbling over stones and rocks and tufts of heather, and falling into holes, and scrambling out again like one drunk. I could hear her laughing at me too,—she who so seldom laughed; and it was with difficulty she could muster gravity enough to say she hoped I had not hurt myself.
We gained the pier at last, and, guided by a lantern held by one of the boatmen, we saw the boat bobbing and tossing some five feet down below. Lizzy sprang in at once, amidst the applauding cheers of the crew; and then several voices cried out, “Now, sir! Now, your honor!” while two stout fellows pushed me vigorously, as though to throw me into the sea. I struggled and fought manfully, but in vain. I was jerked off my legs, and hurled headlong down, and found myself caught below by some strong arms, though not until I had half sprained my wrist, and barked one of my shins from knee to instep. These sufferings soon gave way to others, as I became sea-sick, and lay at the bottom of the boat, praying we might all go down, and end a misery I could no longer endure. That spars struck me, and ballast rolled over me; that heavy-footed sailors trampled me, and seemed to dance on me,—were things I minded not. Great waves broke over the bows, and came in sheets of foam and water over me. What cared I? I had that death-like sickness that makes all life hideous, and I felt I had reached a depth of degradation and misery in which there was only one desire,—that for death. That we succeeded in clearing the point which formed one side of the bay was little short of a miracle, and I remember the cheer the boatmen gave as the danger was passed, and my last hope of our all going down left me. After this, I know no more.
A wild confusion of voices, a sort of scuffling uproar, a grating sound, and more feet dancing over me, aroused me. I looked up. It was dawn; a gray murky streak lay towards the horizon, and sheets of rain were carried swiftly on the winds. We were being dragged up on a low shingly shore, and the men—up to their waists in water—were carrying the boat along.
As I looked over the gunwale, I saw a huge strong fellow rush down the slope, and breasting the waves as they beat, approach the boat. Lizzy sprang into his arms at once, and he carried her back to land triumphantly. I suppose at any other moment a pang of jealousy might have shot through me. Much sea-sickness, like perfect love, overcometh all things. I felt no more, as I gazed, than if it had been a bundle he had been clasping to his bosom.
They lifted me up, and laid me on the shingle.
“Oh, do, Tom; he is such a good creature!” said a voice which, low as it was, I heard distinctly.
“By all that's droll! this is the Cockney I met at Mor-risson's!” cried a loud voice. I looked up; and there, bending over me, was Counsellor MacNamara, the bland stranger I had fallen in with at Dublin.
“Are you able to get on your legs,” asked he, “or shall we have you carried?”
“No,” said I, faintly; “I 'd rather lie here.”
“Oh, we can't leave him here, Tom; it's too cruel.”
“I tell you, Lizzy,” said he, impatiently, “there's not a minute to lose.”
“Let them carry him, then,” said she, pleadingly.
I mildly protested my wish to live and die where I lay; but they carried me up somewhere, and they put me to bed, and they gave me hot drinks, and I fell into, not a sleep, but a trance, that lasted twenty-odd hours.
“Faix! they had a narrow escape of it,” were the first intelligible words I heard on awaking. “They were only just married and druv off when old Dan Dudgeon came up, driving like mad. He was foaming with passion, and said if he went to the gallows for it, he 'd shoot the rascal that abused his hospitality and stole his daughter. The lady left this note for your honor.”
It went thus:—
“Dear Mr. Gosslett,—You will, I well know, bear me no ill-will for the little fraud I have practised on you. It was an old engagement, broken off by a momentary imprudence on Tom's part; but as I knew he loved me, it was forgiven. My father would not have ever consented to the match, and we were driven to this strait. I entreat you to forgive and believe me
“Most truly yours,
“Lizzy MacNamara.”
I stole quietly out of Ireland after this, and got over to the Isle of Man, where I learned that my patron had thrown up his Ionian appointment, and I was once again on the world.