The Earl's promise

High noon once again at Kingslough; high noon, with a leaden sky, a drizzling rain falling, the streets ankle deep in mud, the side paths sloppy and dirty.

Altogether a miserable noon—the sea out a long way, as was its wont to go at Kingslough when low tide-time came; an expanse of grey, sad-looking shore; the water still and sullen; the hills the only bit of colour in the landscape, for the foliage of the fir-trees in the distant woods looked almost black by contrast with the leafless branches amongst which they reared their heads.

No sunlight dancing on the waves; no shifting shadows succeeded by bright patches of brightness coming and going upon the uplands; no mellow haze softening the distance; no purple bloom softening the scene into a dream of fairyland. At the foot of its hills, Kingslough lay crouching and shivering its houses together; houses in which every blind in the lower windows was drawn close, or the shutters closed, in token of—respect, the people would have said.

Let the word go for what it was worth. It could not now matter to Lord Glendare—in evidence of whose death the weather itself seemed to have put on mourning—whether the men he had ground down into the earth loved or hated, respected or despised, his memory.

He was gone—by the road winding inland, along the Glendare Parade—closely-shut houses on one side, and the dark, bare shore, with the leaden-coloured sea reflecting a leaden sky, on the other—up the steep hillside they were about to bear the mortal remains of the earl to their last earthly home.

Nearly seven years had passed since his previous visit to Ireland, and during that time progress set a weak, uncertain foot, even in Kingslough.

Men had arisen who, from first whispering doubts of the Glendare infallibility, gradually grew bolder, and at length openly proclaimed the new doctrine, that property has its duties, and that the human being, be he of gentle birth or of simple, to whom many talents have been given, must account some day for the use made of those talents, if not at any human tribunal, before the throne of God.

To those who had been accustomed to regard themselves as relieved from all responsibility by the act of God Himself; who believed in the divine right of landlords to do what they liked with their own; who had never regarded the people save as so much raw material, out of which rent and renewal fines were to be extracted—easily and kindly if possible—with difficulty and harshness should necessity arise; to those, in a word, who, like the Glendares, had been living on the edge of a social precipice, the increasing murmurs of discontent fell on their ears as a sound of impossible, yet uncomfortable, prophecy.

They had been Glendares since the time of that careless, selfish English trooper; they had been great people; they had lived on the fat of the land; they had ruffled it with the best; the fairest women had smiled upon them; men of rank equal to their own, of better birth, of stricter principles, had condoned the faults and sins of their false, bad race, for the sake of the charms of person and the grace of manner which distinguished all of the name; and could it be—could it that an end was to come to the pleasant vices paid for by the sweat of toiling peasants, the prematurely old faces of anxious wives, the feeble though willing work of little children, who were turned out of their cradles into the fields to help to make up the rent?

Had noon come and gone, and were the evening shadows already darkening the fair landscape? Was the day in which their fellows greeted them with smiles, and paid them honour, drawing to an end, and a night, dark and starless, closing in around a House which had ruled despotically for so long and so ill.

As is usual, the signs of the times were first made apparent in increased difficulties of obtaining money or credit. So to speak, the murmurs of dissatisfaction grew into words, which could be distinguished by the ears of the earl, if by no other members of the family.

Never had a Glendare been so deeply involved in debt as he; never had a Glendare been so short of that which should enable him to clear his debts, even temporarily. One generation had gone on pushing its burdens on the next. Long leases, sometimes for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, had been granted by successive proprietors at disastrously small rents, for the sake of a “lump sum down,” which sum vanished like “snow off a dyke.” Lands had been sold, rights conceded. Almost everything available with which the Glendares could part had been leased or sold or mortgaged.

Fortunes were being made out of streams, moors, building-sites, houses, and farms the Glendares had parted with, under the pressure of importunate creditors, for an old song.

No young sprig of nobility ever made worse bargains with professed money-lenders than successive earls with men who were wise enough to take advantage of the Somerford necessities. Agent after agent had fattened on the spoil; some of them, catching the infection of their betters, spent their money recklessly, and came again, or their families after them, to indigence. Some went to England and did well there; others, again, bought properties in distant parts of Ireland, and set up in the land-owning business for themselves; all, at any rate—however they spent their money—had a pull out of the Glendare purse, as the state of the Glendare purse could testify.

The mismanagement, the profuse expenditure, the eating the calf before birth, the depredations of outsiders, had continued for a long time, but it was impossible the game could be carried on for ever.

The end was coming; the murmurs of a once voiceless people, rising at length into a hoarse low cry of discontent, reached even to London, and, together with the remonstrances of lawyers and agents and the demands and entreaties of duns, told the earl that, unless he and his reformed their ways, reduced their outgoings and came down a little from their high estate, they would have to sink altogether and drop a title and a rank they had no longer wealth to maintain.

“It is hard upon me in my old age,” said the earl to himself with that self-pity which would be ludicrous were it not almost pathetic, which those who have never showed pity to others always extend to themselves—“old, broken, weighed down by trouble, with one foot in the grave”—but here the soliloquy ended. The ideas it expressed seemed too true to form pleasant food even for self-pity. The years “few and evil” were drawing to a close, and the prospect of having both feet laid in the grave was as little agreeable to his lordship as it proves to most of those who have loved this world, its sins, its pomps, and its pleasures passing well.

“It all began when Arthur went,” he said one day to Lady Glendare; and certainly, since the death of his favourite son, trouble and the earl had not walked on different sides of life’s highway. Petty annoyances, grave anxieties, family trials, succeeded each other as though all were part of a giant army gathered to annihilate an enemy.

Save Henry—the heir—he was childless, and one of his sons had before his departure, dragged even the Glendare name through such disreputable places that the world could scarcely put on a show of decent sympathy with his parents when his career was cut short.

Henry the earl did not love—or loved, to speak more correctly, after the fashion in which men usually love those who are born to wear their shoes after them—and Henry had not much affection to spare for his father.

Nevertheless, he had been ready enough to join him in granting leases, and cutting off part of the entail, until he discovered that far more than the lion’s portion of the spoil was finding its way into the earl’s pocket.

Some one enlightened that overwise young man on this point; my lady declared the some one was Robert Somerford, whom she now hated with that impotent hatred only a weak vain woman can entertain towards a man who, through the deaths of her children, stands a few feet nearer rank and wealth; and the result was, that the next time the earl asked his son to join him in some fresh work of destruction, his son flatly refused to do anything of the kind.

“There has been enough of this suicidal policy in the family already,” said the young man with an air of withering superiority, “and I for one will be no party to its continuance.”

“But, Henry, you are as much in want of money as I am, and I only ask you to do for and with me what I did for my father,” urged the earl.

“What you may have chosen to do for your father is beside the question,” was the reply. “I have quite made up my mind as to the course I intend to take. It is true I am in want of money, but, on the whole, I find the Jews cheaper than your lordship”—

Whereupon his lordship ordered him to leave the house, and there being reasons why London was at that time not so agreeable a residence as it might have have been to the future earl, he went to visit his relatives at Rosemont—

Who now consisted, by marriage and otherwise, of Mr. Robert Somerford, Mrs. Somerford translated into Mrs. Dillwyn, and her husband, Mr. Dillwyn.

The news of the proposed matrimonial alliance had electrified Kingslough six years previously. That Mr. Dillwyn should propose! that Mrs. Somerford should consent!—so the sentences of wonderment ran, while gossips lifted their hands—whilst ladies eligible as to spinsterhood, though not equally so as to age, wondered what the agent could be thinking about to marry a woman older than himself, and she a widow—whilst men shook their heads and said, “Dillwyn was not born yesterday.”

“What will the earl do under the circumstances?” people inquired—meaning, Would the earl dismiss his agent, or receive him into the bosom of the Glendare family? would he give the bride-elect notice to leave Rosemont, or would he ask her and the bridegroom to spend part of the honeymoon in London?

Popular opinion inclined to the belief that Mr. Dillwyn would have to leave his situation and deliver up his papers, and had Lady Glendare’s wishes been followed, a line hard and fast had then been drawn between the earl and the occupants of Rosemont; but her wishes were not followed, and not only was Mrs. Somerford allowed to remain at Rosemont, but Mr. Dillwyn was permitted to take up his abode there with her.

He offered to pay a rent for the mansion and grounds, and, to his secret satisfaction, Lord Glendare accepted his offer. When Henry Lord Trevor came of age, almost one of his first acts was, with his father, to grant a long lease of Rosemont to the agent.

“But remember, Dillwyn, Rosemont is still to be our home when we come to Ireland,” said the earl; and Mr. Dillwyn agreed, nothing loth.

He had counted the cost of his plan before carrying it into practice, and the cost included maintaining his noble relatives on the few occasions they might choose to honour Ireland with their company.

As for Mr. Robert Somerford, he did not like Mr. Dillwyn, but he did not dislike the match. It gave him a much more comfortable home than had hitherto fallen to his lot, money in his purse, power to travel, and, to a certain extent, maintain his proper position in the world.

There were pecuniary ease and comparative affluence amongst the trio who lived there.

Mr. Dillwyn was well to do, and carefully trying to be better, but he acted towards his stepson with a liberality which at last elicited some astonished, if not grateful, remark from the younger man.

“It is not right you should be mewed up in a remote country house through the best years of your life,” answered Mr. Dillwyn; “you ought to see the world, and become fitted for a position beyond that of a mere dependant. It is on the cards you may one day be Earl of Glendare yourself.”

With an amazement too swift and genuine to be assumed, Mr. Somerford, looking eagerly in the agent’s face, asked him what he meant.

“Precisely what I say,” answered Mr. Dillwyn. “Count your chances, and see what stands between you and the title.”

There was a pause; then Mr. Somerford, having presumably counted the chances and found them in his favour, said,—

“You calculated on this when you married my mother.”

“I did, Mr. Somerford,” was the reply, as calmly uttered as though there had been no sting contained in the sentence, no scorn in the tone. “A man must marry for something—love, money, interest. Your mother married me because she was sick of existing on her wretched pittance of a jointure, because she believed I might assist you. I married her because I had reasons to believe you might one day be able to serve me; because I knew the match must strengthen my position with the earl. There was no question of love in the matter, no pretence of anything beyond respect;” and Mr. Dillwyn stopped, thinking evidently his stepson ought to be perfectly satisfied with the explanation vouchsafed.

But Mr. Somerford’s vanity had received a blow which a much longer and more plausible explanation might have failed to soothe.

He had thought, honestly and sincerely, that the honour of an alliance with a member of his family was more than an equivalent for Mr. Dillwyn’s good looks, comparative youth, unquestionable ability, and wealth acquired—no one exactly understood how; and now to be told that, instead of an open, the man had been playing an underhand, game—with himself as probable ace of trumps hidden up his sleeve all the time—was more than he could endure.

“So that was your motive?” he began quietly, drawing in his breath at the end of his sentence, as the wind lulls for a moment before the storm breaks forth in its fury.

With all their amiability the Somerfords had tempers, and knew on occasions how to exhibit them; and the years spent in association with the family had not been passed by Mr. Dillwyn altogether in vain.

Well, at any rate, he understood what the lowering of Mr. Robert’s voice and the compression of his lips portended, and so hastened to avert the threatened hurricane.

“I have shown you my hand,” he began. “Do not let us quarrel about the honours I hold till we are quite sure they will win. Do not speak that which is in your mind unless you are satisfied it will be to your interest to quarrel with me. I tell you it is your interest to keep me as your friend. If the Glendare estates, or any part of them, are to be saved, which is problematical, I am the only person who can tell you how to save them. If without the estates you are ever to keep your head above water, I am the only person able to show you the way.”

“I ought to be the last person to question your ability to compass anything on which you set your mind,” said Mr. Somerford, “but I do not feel at all disposed to allow you to exercise your talents in the management of my affairs.”

“When you have affairs to manage, it will be time enough to discuss that question,” retorted the agent. “Meanwhile, if I did make a throw for fortune and position, remember what I staked upon it. I burdened myself—I use the word advisedly, Robert—with a young man utterly destitute, with a lady worthy of all esteem, but no longer even in the prime of middle life, while between you and the possibility of the title stood how many? The Glendares, I believe, always expect people to give them something for nothing; to waste their health, strength, money, in the unselfish desire to give them pleasure; but if you have taken up any false ideas of that kind with regard to me, disabuse your mind of it as fast as you can. It is of no use scowling. I will work with you or against you; only say whether we are to be friends or foes, and I will order my course accordingly.”

“You are wondrous plain, sir, all of a sudden,” said Mr. Somerford with a sneer.

“I am wondrous true, considering the nature of the man to whom I am speaking,” replied Mr. Dillwyn.

“There is no necessity for you to favour me with an analysis of my character,” returned the younger man; “I think we understand each other without going into particulars. It seems we must row together, or swim separate. Is not that the English of the confidence you have forced upon me? Yes; well, that being the case, and having no taste for salt water, I agree to let bygones be bygones, and take my chance with you.”

“Meaning that we are to be friends?”

“If you attach any importance to the expression, yes.”

“Will you give me your hand upon it?”

“Having given my word, I should have imagined the other form unnecessary; but as you wish——” and he held out his hand, which Mr. Dillwyn clasped hard for a moment.

Then he loosed it, saying, “That is a bargain.”

“Agreed,” answered Mr. Somerford carelessly; and he went off, humming an opera air.

“I would not give much for my hopes if you were once king,” muttered the agent, as he watched his retreating figure. “Drivelling idiots all—cruel, selfish, vain, inconsequent fools—earl, heir, nephew. What could his mother have been thinking of when she brought such a short-sighted simpleton into a world already overweighted with simpletons? Well, forewarned forearmed, and when it comes to a stand-up fight between us we shall see which man has best made ready for battle. He has gone to Bayview I suppose. Ah, Grace! you had better have taken me. Even if he comes to be earl, you will find a coronet cannot compensate for the want of both head and heart.”

Whereby hung a tale—one never enlarged upon by Grace Moffat. After she refused her first lover, she never took man, woman, or child into her full confidence about those who came after.

It was to this united household Henry Lord Trevor, after the unpleasantness with his father, came. Sympathy in abundance he received from all the inmates of Rosemont, to say nothing of that which he valued far more than sympathy—a considerable pecuniary advance from Mr. Dillwyn, who, playing in those days for high stakes, could not afford to be over-cautious in his game.

On the whole, the heir-apparent did not dislike Ireland; the almost fulsome affection displayed by the tenantry, who, growing weary of the old régime, trusted that the “young lord, bless him!” would reduce their rents, and find money for improvements, was not unpleasant to one of a family to whom popularity was as the sunshine and the breeze to mankind in general.

He would not have been a Glendare had he not promised liberally, and thus he charmed the people and they pleased him. A better shot than his cousin—a more indefatigable sportsman—he traversed the moors and walked over the hills in search of game. All in vain, knowing what he knew, Mr. Dillwyn tried to keep him within bounds (the life of this young man had suddenly become precious in his eyes); he would not be staid; and so, with the seeds of a fatal disease lying in his frame, he exposed himself to rain and storm, and trudged miles through mists that were as the very breath of death to a constitution such as his.

By Mr. Dillwyn’s advice the breach with Lord Glendare was closed. At his dictation the heir wrote a letter of apology for the expressions of which he had made use. After stating how deeply he regretted having permitted temper to overcome his filial respect, he proceeded to say that, whilst his views concerning the general impolicy of granting long leases at nominal rents for the sake of raising amounts utterly nonequivalent to the benefits conferred, remained unaltered, still, if any plan were thought of by which his father’s difficulties could be permanently lessened, he would do all in his power to assist in carrying it into effect. “For myself,” he went on, “I have already experienced so much of the ill effects of running into debt, that I feel as though I could make any sacrifice to set our affairs straight. I should not object even to take up my residence permanently in Ireland—(he had been a week in the country, and game was plentiful)—if it were thought desirable for me to do so. Dillwyn believes a considerable amount might be raised by granting leases for a certain term to those of the tenants who hold their land on lives. There has been such a mortality amongst the members of our family lately, that a feeling of uneasiness is abroad, and it seems probable that even those persons to whom fresh leases of this description have been granted since I came of age would willingly pay a further sum to have their tenancy placed upon a more secure footing. I may mention one case in illustration of this. Since I arrived here, Mr. Brady, to whom you may recollect we granted a lease of the Castle Farm, Scott’s tenancy of which expires at the death of Lady Jane Somerford, has called to say he is prepared to pay any amount Dillwyn may consider fair, if we will change the lease from three lives to ninety-nine years. Evidently he does not think our space of existence likely to extend to the same term as that of her ladyship.”

The last sentence was not, it is unnecessary to say, prompted by Mr. Dillwyn. He was not given to sentimentality; nevertheless a grave pity darkened his eyes as the young man laughingly read it aloud.

“Old ladies have a wonderful knack of living,” he went on. “Now there is that Miss Riley; she must have been a hundred, twenty years ago.”

“I do not know her age,” Mr. Dillwyn answered; “but Lady Jane Somerford was ninety-six last June. She has had her share of the Glendare revenues, no matter who else may have gone short.”

“I wonder who invented life-leases,” remarked the other thoughtfully.

“Some one who liked speculating himself, and understood the love for speculation, which is an integral part of human nature.”

“But our tenants’ human nature appears eminently non-speculative,” was the reply.

“As the world grows older, its inhabitants get wiser,” said Mr. Dillwyn. He could have told his auditor that there would be little of a speculative character in taking a lease on his life, at all events! but the agent’s rule had always been to try to make things pleasant, and he was not going to deviate from it now.

“He may live; who knows?” reflected Mr. Dillwyn; “in a warm climate he might last for years; but, whether he live or die, if only the earl agree to my scheme Mr. Robert will find he had better not have tried to play a double game with me.”

From which remark it will be seen that the agent’s Christianity did not extend so far as the forgiveness of injuries inflicted or contemplated.

As for the earl, he was only too happy to accept the olive-branch held out by his son; and as the course suggested by Mr. Dillwyn offered a chance of raising some money, he came over to Ireland in person to carry it with greater expedition into effect.

Glad enough was he to leave London and its duns behind him for a season, and, crouching over the library fire at Rosemont, a bent and broken man, he assured Mr. Dillwyn, even with tears, that if any arrangement could be made which might enable him to end his days in peace, he would live anywhere—he would do anything—he would induce her ladyship to do anything for the sake of obtaining peace.

“It has been all wrong from beginning to end,” he declared, with a frankness characteristic of those who, having eaten up the whole of their cake at once, lament the absence of any hoard from which another may be obtained. “It has been all a mistake. I ought to have retrenched years ago; I ought to have come here, or lived abroad. Take warning by me, Henry, and remember that an extravagant youth means a miserable old age. Life seemed very happy once—ah! that was a long, long time ago. If I could but have the past to spend over again, with my present experience——”

“You would make just as bad a business of your second existence as you have done of your first,” thought Mr. Dillwyn, while he publicly observed “that regrets were worse than useless; that what they had now to consider was, how to surmount present difficulties.”

“By the way,” he went on, “speaking of difficulties, there seems to be one with Scott of the Castle Farm. He says your lordship promised him a renewal of his lease, and that he has spent a mint of money on the place in consequence.”

“The Castle Farm! where is it? what is it?” exclaimed the earl pettishly. “I wish, Dillwyn, you would not pester me about matters that lie exclusively in your province. I promise the man a lease? why should I? And, even if I had, he must have been an idiot to lay out money until he got it.”

“But he says he gave your lordship money for granting it.”

“Now, what nonsense all this is!” cried the earl angrily. “I don’t know where the Castle Farm is. I should not know the man Scott if I met him to-morrow. Why should he bring money to me instead of paying it to you? What have I ever had to do with the tenants, except at election times?”

“That is the point,” persisted Mr. Dillwyn. “He declares he paid you the money when you were over at the time of the last election, and that, therefore, Mr. Brady’s lease is invalid.”

“He must be a fool,” observed the earl in a tone of sincere conviction.

“So I told him,” was Mr. Dillwyn’s reply.

“He has no lease, has he?” asked the earl.

“None excepting that which expires with the life of Lady Jane Somerford.”

“Then what does the fellow mean?”

“That I really cannot say,” answered the agent.

“Of course, it is all a trumped-up story,” said Lord Somerford.

“Very possibly,” agreed Mr. Dillwyn, and the subject dropped.

Next day, when Amos Scott called at the agent’s office, that gentleman said to him,—

“Now, look here, Scott—you chose to deal with the earl direct before, and you must settle this matter with him now. I wash my hands of it. I don’t understand the transaction, and I don’t want to understand it. The earl will be up to his ears in business for a few days, but go to Rosemont, say the early part of next week, and ask to see Lord Trevor. I will beg him to get you speech of his father.”

“Yer honour’s a hard man, but I thought you would have seen justice done to me,” said Amos bitterly.

“I cannot do you justice. I tell you I know no more of the matter than the babe unborn. I will undertake that the earl shall see you; anything more is beyond my power. However it may be, you have not much cause of complaint; Lady Jane has lived twenty-six years longer than the time she ought, and you have had the benefit of her toughness.”

“No thanks either to you or my lord,” answered Amos Scott with a grim smile.

“Thanks to Providence, who, it is said takes an especial care of fools,” retorted Mr. Dillwyn. “Come up on Tuesday morning about ten o’clock. I will speak to Lord Trevor to-night; that is all I can do for you.”

Man proposes, but he cannot dispose. Amos Scott never “had speech” of Louis Lord Glendare, who, before Tuesday came, was lying at Rosemont ill unto death, dying as fast as he knew how.

Physicians came from Dublin; my lady was summoned in all speed from London: but the first said there was “no hope,” and the presence of the latter failed to save.

For nearly a fortnight my lord lay unconscious of debt, writs, duns, bailiffs—lay forgetful of his wasted life—of the good he had neglected to do—of the evil he had not failed to perform.

For a moment—only for a moment—at the very last, the light flickered up again.

His son noticed the change, and leaned eagerly forward.

“Arthur,” murmured the dying man, thinking of the dead; and that was all—he was Earl of Glendare no more. His son had succeeded to the title.

Following fast on the heels of the physicians came a Dublin undertaker. No expense was to be spared about the funeral; such were the new earl’s orders.

For eight whole days, which seemed to the ordinary Irish mind a period almost disreputable, the late earl lay sleeping his last sleep in the home of his ancestors—sleeping so quietly that he might well have dispensed with the watchers, who never left his side by day or by night.

At length the ninth day arrived, that on which he was to be borne to Ballyknock Abbey, when, after the lapse of years, the reader is asked once again to enter Kingslough at high noon.

The town is in mourning; the inhabitants, with a hush of expectation on them, are waiting to behold the spectacle of the “Th’ Airl” being carried to his rest.