The Earl's promise

Public opinion is treacherous and unmanageable as the sea. One hour a man is sitting high and dry watching the waves encircle some far away object; the next he beholds them hurrying in to engulf himself.

Once the tide sets against any person, it increases in volume and strength every moment, but there are no precise means of knowing when it will turn in this manner or of telling why it has done so.

Fast as they could flow the waters of popular dissatisfaction were running against Mr. Brady.

At a local meeting held at Glenwellan, which he had the courage or the hardihood to attend, he was hissed, whilst General Riley’s appearance proved the signal for loud and prolonged applause.

Some who were sufficiently indifferent to both men to be able to observe accurately, reported that Mr. Brady turned white to the lips at a display of feeling so decided and so unexpected; and this is sufficiently probable, since those who are the most ready to defy the opinion of their fellows are the least willing to put up with the consequences such defiance usually entails.

Be this as it may, Mr. Brady a few days later was not greatly surprised when on offering to transfer his business to a more scrupulous firm of solicitors than those to whom he had previously entrusted the conduct of his difficulties, the proposal was courteously but firmly declined.

“I shall live it down,” thought Mr. Brady as he strode out of the office, his hat crushed a little over his brows.

He had said the same thing before, and he had done it; but after all, each year in a man’s age, each upward step he has climbed, render that “living down” a more difficult business to perform.

It is impossible to go on having a leg broken and reset without becoming slightly a cripple, and it is more impossible still that a character shall go through a blackening process time after time and come out white in the end.

Mr. Brady had set himself a harder task than he imagined when he talked of living down the effects of his latest error, and if he did not know this Nettie did; Nettie who, hearing all that was going on, having read those ballads which found swift sale at the somewhat high price of one halfpenny each, having seen the “dour” looks cast on her husband in the barn-like meeting-house, ventured to ask him if he did not think it would be better to sell all they possessed and remove to another part of the country.

Whereupon, he turned with passionate fury, with the mad anger of a brutal nature, addressing the only person who was completely hopelessly in his power, and reproached her with having been the curse of his life, the ruin of his prospects, the sole cause of every misfortune that had befallen him.

“I wish to God I had never set eyes on you,” he said. “If I must be such a fool as to marry, I ought to have married some one who would have been a help instead of a burden, a woman capable of doing something besides bringing a tribe of fretful, delicate children into the world.”

“You ought to have married a woman, Daniel Brady,” answered Nettie calmly, “who the first blow you gave her would have had you up before the magistrate and punished for it.”

“None of your insolence or it will be worse for you,” he interrupted.

“Who,” continued Nettie, shrinking a little with a physical terror which had become habitual, “would have insisted on having things suitable for herself and her children, and who, if you had not provided them would have left you.”

“Perhaps you are thinking of doing something of the kind,” he suggested with the demon which was in him looking threateningly out of his eyes.

“No,” she said wearily; “I do not care about anything for myself now, it was only for the children’s sake I spoke; only to get them away from a place where their father’s sins are sung through the streets, where—”

He did not let her finish the sentence. He struck her down where she stood, and with a parting piece of advice to “keep a quieter tongue in her head or it would be worse for her and her brats too,” left the room, banging the door after him.

There was nothing in this so particularly new as to astonish Nettie. She was not much hurt, but as she raised herself slowly to a sitting position, she put her hand to her head with a gesture as of one suffering some cruel pain.

“How long,” she murmured, “how long can I bear it? God grant me strength to endure to the end. If mothers could foresee what ‘Deliver us from evil’ may some day come to mean, they might hope their babies would never live to learn a prayer.”

Mr. Brady’s mother it may reasonably be supposed had been tempted to indulge in somewhat similar thoughts before death considerately removed her from a contemplation of her son’s demerits; and certainly public opinion had so rapidly discovered all the shortcomings of the owner of Maryville that it was tacitly admitted (so far as human judgment could understand), if he had never been born it would have been better for him and all belonging to him.

One of the effects of this widely-spread prejudice against a man who, determined to rise by his own efforts, had certainly spared no pains in the attempt, was that from having his wrongs comparatively speaking overlooked Amos Scott became at once a popular and distinguished individual. Letters were sent to certain newspapers on the subject of tenantright, in which Scott’s case was mentioned. Leaders were written referring directly to the still unsettled dispute at the Castle Farm, and indirectly to the attempt of one of the disputants to appropriate the inheritance of a gentleman of whom the county was deservedly proud.

Mr. Brady threatened to proceed against the proprietor of one of the Kilcurragh papers unless an apology were inserted, but the proprietor inserted no apology, and no proceedings were instituted. A man who has a whole county against him may well be excused for dreading the cross-examination of an Irish barrister, and this man dreaded it with a wholesome horror, and was discreet accordingly.

All this time Amos Scott was retailing his grievances to lawyer after lawyer, walking many miles to “get speech” of gentlemen he thought might take his part, and get him his rights as he called them.

He would be off early in the morning—a piece of oat-cake, or griddle bread, in the pocket of his home-spun blue frieze coat, and he would come home at night foot-sore and weary, having broken his fast with no other food save that mentioned, washed down by a draught of water from some way-side brook, too tired to eat, too sick at heart to sleep.

For all men were in the same story. Whether they expressed sorrow for his misfortunes or told him by their manner his affairs were no concern of theirs, the result proved identical. Nothing could be done in the matter. No money—no influence—no lapse of time—no amount of trouble could undo the evil brought by that promise which the Earl had forgotten almost as soon as made.

Lawyers of course took a prosaic view of the affair, and simply assured Scott there was no use in throwing good money after bad; that he had no case, and they could not make one for him; whilst even those private individuals who commiserated him most, could not refrain from expressing wonderment at the utter simplicity which caused him to take no manner of precaution for his own safety in the transaction.

“What would you have had me do, sir?” he asked one gentleman piteously. “What more did I want than Th’ Airl’s word? Sure, if I had told him I’d do a thing, that would have been as good as any bond, and me only a poor man labouring with my hands to keep me and my wife and the family.

“Says Th’ Airl to me, says he,

“‘The land’s yours for three lives longer, and you can put in one of the three for yourself.’

“So then I asked him, would I take the money on to the agent, and he says,

“‘No, you may give it to me.’

“And I counted the notes into his own hand. I mind how the sun shone on a ring he had on his finger while I was doing it. Then I asked him about the writings, and he said, they couldn’t he signed till Henry the young airl came of age, but that if Lady Jane died before he did so, he would see me safe.

“He was riding off when he turned, and said,

“‘I suppose though, my good fellow, you are on the right side, because if not, I must give you back your money, and let somebody that have the renewal.’

“He said it joking like. He was always free and pleasant in his way Th’ Airl.”

A simple enough narrative, which no one who heard it doubted the truth of for a moment. A narrative which was recited by many a stump orator of the day, and stirred the hearts of thousands who were or who imagined themselves to be labouring under injustice as great and as irremediable.

Simple as it was, however, no human being could persuade Amos Scott that any of his listeners perfectly understood it. Had even one amongst the number done so, he felt quite satisfied he should hear no more said about his defiance being worse than useless.

“If I could only make yer honour comprehend it,” he said reproachfully, though respectfully, to Lord Ardmorne’s agent, who spite of his having, as he assured Amos over and over again, nothing whatever to do with the Glendares or their tenants, had been seized upon by the farmer for help and sympathy, “you would see it as I see it.”

“Mr. Scott,” answered the agent solemnly, “if I could only make you comprehend it, you would see how hopeless your position is.”

When, however, did argument or assertion convince an obstinate, uneducated man. If such a miracle were ever wrought by earthly means, it was not in the case of the poor misguided farmer who wandered about the country seeking help from this one and that, discoursing about his wrongs in lonely cabins, telling his grievances to chance companions, wasting his slender means in feeing such lawyers as would take his money, and in providing food for such of his family as were still at home.

David had returned Miss Moffat’s loan to that young lady with a characteristic note, in which, after thanking her for her goodness and telling her how troubled in his mind he was to hear of the master’s death, he went on to say how grateful he should be in case she had no need of the money if she would lend it to his next oldest brother, who was mad to join him. And now two of the sons were in America, two of the daughters in service, and Reuben ready to take a schoolmaster’s place when the old people could spare him.

“But I can’t leave them yet, Miss Grace,” he wrote. “I am not much use here, I know; but still I can speak a word to the father when he comes home at night, and the mother is too heartsore to ask him ‘what luck?’ She is keen on now for us to start for America, but the father won’t hear talk of it. David sent her home a pound two months ago, and another last week; a man who went out from these parts twenty years since, and who has never been in Ireland again till now, brought it, and some odds and ends of presents, amongst other things a walking-stick that we often say would have just pleased the master; it is so light, though so big; it is made from the root of the vine, Mr. Moody says, and seems wonderful handy for almost any purpose. He tells us America is the poor man’s country, and it seems like it. He went away with as little as any of us, and he has come home dressed like a gentleman, with gold studs in his shirt, and a gold watch and chain, and not a word of Irish in his tongue. It is just wonderful to hear how like a native-born American he talks. He tried to persuade my father to leave what he calls the ‘rotten old ship’ and make for ‘new diggins,’ but my father bid him not talk about things he has no knowledge of, and the decent man went away, offended like.”

But in this Reuben Scott chanced to be mistaken; Mr. Moody did not cease visiting at the Castle Farm because he was offended with its owner. He only did so as he chanced to remark to an acquaintance, because he never had cared for society where “pistols and bowie knives were lying about, and he guessed there would be one or the other at work before Scott moved away from his clearing.”

Affairs had arrived at this pass when Mr. Brady, finding the law in his own province slow to assist him, decided on going to Dublin and seeking counsel there.

Not having confined to his own bosom the purport of this journey, the Kingslough rabble got hold of it, and decided that an auspicious time for giving public expression to their feelings had arrived.

A meeting therefore was convened to take place on the day of Mr. Brady’s departure, when it was decided that gentleman should be hung in effigy, and a scaffold for this laudable purpose was actually in course of erection, when an extremely strong hint from the magistrates stopped its further progress. Not to be defeated, however, within twenty-four hours Kingslough and its neighbourhood was startled from its propriety by the sight of monster bills, which occupied every available space where it was possible to placard the announcement, stating that the body of Mr. Daniel Brady would be removed from Somerford Street to its place of interment on the following day, at four o’clock P.M., when the attendance of friends would be esteemed a favour.

Now Somerford Street—not an inconsiderable thoroughfare in the early days of Ballylough—had by a not infrequent turn of times’ wheel become one of the lowest, dirtiest, most disreputable lanes in Kingslough—a lane where vice and filth caroused in wretched fashion together; where sin and misery waved their rags in defiance of law and decency; whence respectability fled as from the plague; where shame, remorse, repentance, hope, could not exist for an hour, save it might be—and sometimes God be praised it was—for a few hours in the last extremity.

To condense the whole matter into a sentence, Somerford Street was as bad a street as could have been found even in the Liberties of Dublin, and its inhabitants were as little like men, women, and children, as men, women, and children can ever be. It was a place which, even in its own small way, need not have been afraid to hold up its head with very much more notorious courts and lanes London is sufficiently blessed to reckon within a certain area of Charing Cross at the present day; and it was from this den, inhabited by vice and misery, that Mr. Brady’s obsequies were announced to take place.

What did it mean? Kingslough asked itself in a dull, stupid, inconsequent sort of way.

In a few hours more Kingslough knew, for over the first bills were pasted a second series so scurrilous, so profane, that nowhere out of the Isle of Saints could so scandalous a broadsheet have been produced.

They were not torn down. Decent people did not care to be mixed up in such an affair; the authorities were averse to acting in the matter without advice and consultation, and perhaps feared, as authorities in great cities have since unwisely feared, to make mountains out of molehills by premature interference.

So Kingslough read, and held up its hands, or gravely shook its head, or passed on without sign, or smiled with grim approval of the atrocious bill, or expressed its sympathy in drunken words full of significance, and looks more significant still.

It was the early summer time. Once again the crops were springing and ripening at the Castle Farm. Crops not sown this time by Amos or one belonging to him; and it was light in that northern latitude so soon in the morning, that to get out in the grey dawn almost involved sitting up during the few hours of the short night.

Nevertheless, in the grey dawn some one was astir tearing down those disgraceful placards. Slowly and calmly the sea came rippling in on the shore, closely the blinds were drawn on the Parade and in the houses of Glendare Terrace, in the east there was still not a glimpse of the rising sun, whilst rapidly and nervously the flitting figure did its work.

All at once a burly brute, who, having business far away at an early hour had risen betimes, turned a corner suddenly, and caught sight of a dark figure engaged in the work of destruction. With a whoop and a shout he rushed forward; with a shriek the woman, for it was a woman, fled.

Swift as she was he gained upon her; she left the rough pavement and sped like a greyhound along the more level road, all in vain. Panting, sobbing, she heard the thud of his heavy shoes almost at her heels, felt in imagination his hand on her shoulder, when suddenly turning the corner of a street to try to escape him, she fell almost into the arms of a third person, who, in less time than it takes me to write the words, had planted a good serviceable blow between the eyes of her pursuer, and sent him sprawling in the gutter.

“Mrs. Brady,” he said, turning to the apparition which had so suddenly greeted his vision, “what in Heaven’s name has brought you here at this time of night?”

“I—” she began in a broken husky voice, “I heard of it all and came,” at which point she gave up trying to explain, and dropped down in a heap on the nearest doorstep insensible.

“Here is a delightful complication,” thought Mr. Hanlon as he looked first at the burly brute just gathering himself together, and skulking off with a look of ineffable hate overspreading his countenance, and then at Mrs. Brady, whose light figure he supported with one hand while fumbling for his latch-key with the other.

Had the gift of second sight been vouchsafed to that clever surgeon and mistaken orator, he would have fled from Kingslough within an hour more swiftly than Lot did from the Cities of the Plain, to avoid being mixed up with the evil to come.