The Earl's promise

Amongst his friends and acquaintances Amos Scott’s homestead was considered a marvel of convenience and luxury, whilst by gentle and simple alike Mr. Scott himself was regarded as a very fortunate man—one with whom the world had prospered exceedingly. As his neighbours expressed his lot, “He was born on a sunny morning,” and the sunshine had through forty years scarcely ever been obscured by a cloud.

He farmed the land his fathers had farmed before him. He married the woman of his choice, and that woman chanced to have a stocking full of money to her dowry; his children—all save one Reuben—were strong, straight, healthy; he was respected and well liked by his equals, his superiors, and his inferiors. He paid for his two sittings at the Presbyterian Meeting-house, and the minister drank tea with him and his wife thrice a year at all events. The murrain had left his cattle untouched; all his children, old enough to have sounded such depths of knowledge, could read and write. Reuben, indeed, thanks to Grace Moffat, boasted a much wider range of learning. He was the “scholard” of the family, and the family entertained an openly-expressed expectation that some day—thanks again to Miss Gracie—he would be a schoolmaster, and a secret hope that, thanks to his own abilities and the still not to be despised contents of the typical stocking, he might enter the ministry.

It was entirely as a social question, as a matter of rising in the world, that Amos Scott desired this result. To him the ministry merely represented a body of men who taught the same creed as that he believed, and who, not labouring with their hands, filled a better position than any mere farmer might hope to occupy. He, Amos Scott, was too staunch a Presbyterian to regard the clergy from any superstitious or popish point of view. He always considered himself and men like him as true descendants of the seven thousand who refused to bow their knee to Baal—who, being certainly of the elect, nevertheless threw good works in to swell the credit of the account their faith had previously balanced—and he and the thousands of his fellows who at that time doggedly, and bigotedly, and unchristianly, as it may seem, entered their daily protest against Popery, as surely—from a political point of view—stood between their country and destruction as the Derry Apprentices saved Ireland to England.

Whether Ireland was grateful, or England is grateful, history alone can decide. When that history which has still to be written is published, the staunch and sturdy Presbyterians of the Black North may possibly receive their due meed of praise; but staunch and sturdy people, who hold strong opinions, and like exhibiting them to the world, are apt sometimes to be voted bores, both by those who differ from them, and those who are indifferent to everything, and it is very possibly for this reason, and no better one, that statesmen and peacemakers, and those who consider the Roman Catholic religion “picturesque,” and suited to the “Celtic nature,” and adapted to afford comfort and happiness to “poor, warmhearted, enthusiastic persons,” have all considered and do all consider the stiff-necked Protestantism of the Irish minority—powerful, though a minority—one of the chief causes of the “Irish difficulty.”

Certainly, in the North, at the time of which I write, the Roman Catholics had but a poor life.

What with the favourite form of drunken expletive which consigned the Pope to regions hot and gloomy; what with party tunes, Orange processions, and that which is hardest perhaps of all to bear, the visiting the sins of a system on individuals, and assuming them capable of any crime merely because they belonged to a special Church, it was not easy for “Papists,” as the rival sects loved to style Roman Catholics, to order their course aright.

They were the few amongst the many in the North. In the South the tables were turned, and Protestants did not find it easy to please the warmhearted peasantry, who had then, as now, a fancy for cold lead and firing from behind hedges.

But it is with the North we are concerned, with Ulster when the Church as by law established stood much in the position of Saul. She counted her thousands, but Calvin his tens of thousands. Nineteen-twentieths of the people went to “Meeting.” I should like to see the man who to this day dare call a “Meeting-house” “Chapel” in Ulster. They were a hard, stubborn, honest people, who kept the Lord’s Day with an almost New England strictness, who prayed to the Lord standing, and who sang His praises sitting, and who were, it should please almost any person to imagine, a race the Lord Himself, Who knows all hearts, might have loved, so keen was their sense of duty, their feeling of responsibility, their love of justice, their respect for appointed powers.

To men accustomed to more artificial society, their manners might seem a trifle brusque, their words too plain to be always pleasant; but underneath a rough exterior, hearts beat leal and noble.

Here and there, not at long intervals, but within any one human being’s ken, might have been picked out men and women capable of as noble deeds, of as grand sacrifices, as any which are deemed worthy of being chronicled in romance, and one of those men was Amos Scott, and one of those women was his wife.

At any hour of the day or night had Grace Moffat tapped at their door, and said,—

“We are in sore trouble, we want all the help you can give,” without a second thought, though they were a close-fisted pair, sparing on themselves, devoted to bargains, given to haggling about halfpence—the contents of the magical stocking would have been poured into her lap, and had need occurred Amos would have threshed out his corn, and sold his cows, and parted with his pigs, and handed the proceeds to the young lady, with as little thought of having acted with marvellous generosity as a child, in as fine a spirit of chivalry as moved those poor, weatherbeaten fishermen who, some seventy years ago, rowed a gallant gentleman—gallant, if mistaken—out of sight of land, and then, resting on their oars, pulled forth the paper offering one thousand pounds reward for their passenger, and asked him if he “knew any body answering to that description.” He had thought his disguise perfect, fancied himself safe in it, and behold his whole safety lay and had lain in the honour of those men who were carrying him to the sloop destined to bear one most unfortunate to France and liberty.

And yet to look at Amos Scott and his wife was to destroy the idea of all romance in connexion with them. Hearty and healthy were they both: strong, bony, large-framed, hard-featured. He had been a ruddy-complexioned, bashful fair-haired gossoon when he first beheld his future wife, the buxom, strapping daughter of a village innkeeper. Dark brown was her hair in those days, thick and long enough to twine in ropes round the back of her head; dark brown, also, were her eyes, and she had a large, frank mouth, and large white even teeth, and a complexion delicate, and clear, and beautiful, like most other girls of her nation; but the years had come and gone since then, and the “gossoon” was a middle-aged man, and his wife’s hair was tucked away under one of those caps which cease to be picturesque when once the starch is out of them, and she had wrinkles after the manner of her class—everywhere—and she had lost some of her teeth, and her voice was—well—I love the accent, the honest, friendly accent of the lower classes in that romantic, and picturesque, and sorrowful land; but Mr. Moffat, being an Englishman, though partially acclimatized, did not admire it any more than he admired the dung-heap—graced with a sow and a dozen young ones—that rose to the left hand of the “causeway,” or the sodden, rotting straw, wherein were scratching and pecking some thirty fowls that lay to the right of the said causeway, marking the spot whence a previous midden had been removed.

“Won’t you come in, sir, and sit down off your feet?” asked Mrs. Scott hospitably, anxious to show a gentleman, whose nature she did not in the least understand, all the hospitality in her power; but Mr. Moffat, with a gesture almost of dread, declined the proffered civility.

Once had he been seduced into that abode, once by Grace, and he always thought afterwards, with horror, of the sufferings endured within the walls of Mr. Scott’s mansion.

Cheese had been produced for their delectation,—Cheese, a species of food Mr. Moffat, being a man of weak digestion and given to considering his ailments, loathed. Further, it was new cheese, such as the Irish eat at births and funerals (washing it down with whisky), new cheese, dotted with caraway seeds, and with this Mrs. Scott set out oaten bread, and butter fresh and good, but butter made with Mrs. Scott’s own hands, which did not look inviting, and butter-milk and sweet-milk: and he was expected to eat.

If Mr. Moffat were not genial, and I am not aware his worst enemy ever laid that virtue in the form of a vice to his charge, at all events he was courteous. The feast was spread so humbly and so willingly, with such a simple hospitality and belief that because it chanced to be the best the house held it would be received kindly, that Mr. Moffat could not choose but break a piece off the oat cake and eat it.

“Do you know poor papa can scarcely ever touch butter and never eats cheese,” said Grace to Mrs. Scott, gaily helping herself to a great piece of cake and an enormous slice of butter, “and you know I do not like caraways—you always make my cheese without them,” which speech contained an allusion to the fact of its being Mrs. Scott’s annual custom to present Miss Moffat with a cheese of her own manufacture.

Great were the ceremonies attendant on that presentation, which was always performed by Mrs. Scott in person, and the cheese invariably proved remarkably good. Perhaps, had Grace beheld the modus operandi of its manufacture, she might not have regarded the article as a delicacy, for all Mrs. Scott’s progeny assisted at the tub, and little hands, not so clean as might have been desired, dabbled in the whey.

What the eye does not see, the heart, however, does not grieve over, and Ireland is not the only country in which mothers, impressed by a fatal delusion that their offspring can touch nothing without improving it, permit children to meddle with and dabble in affairs more important than the separation of curd from whey.

As for those youngsters at the Tower Farm, Grace loved them every one. All the later babies she had nursed and cooed over. One of them was called after her, Grace Moffat Scott, and had it been possible for such a suggestion to be made to the Presbyterian mind, she would gladly have stood godmother to the new arrival.

As it was, Amos Scott’s convictions saved her from assuming any such responsibility, and Miss Moffat, thus debarred from any public evidence of affection, had to content herself with fondling the infant so long as it was little, and tossing it up to the ceiling the while it cooed and shrieked an ecstatic accompaniment, and letting it, as age advanced, come like the rest to see what she had in her pockets, what “comforts and lozengers,” were there lying perdu for subsequent delectation.

Often on Saturdays Nettie O’Hara and she had made up a picnic party all by themselves, and taking their luncheon with them, so as to alleviate the pangs of hunger, held high festival among the ruins of the tower which gave a name to Amos Scott’s farm.

Dear to Grace was every inch of that farm, one of the delights of her childhood had been to accompany her nurse thither. There were not so many importunate urchins then to claim Mrs. Scott’s attention, and every moment of her time could therefore be devoted to her little lady guest.

For her—the motherless, black-frocked, grave, old-fashioned orphan—were saved the reddest and sunniest apples in the orchard; for her was baked the first “bannock” that could be manufactured out of new potatoes; for her always was kept a comb of honey; for her the “strippings” from the best cow, which Grace, who was warned at home that new milk “would make her yellow,” regarded in the light of a forbidden indulgence, and drank rapturously out of the lid of a tin can; for her, surreptitious rides on Pat, the donkey, and Rob, the venerable black pony, over whose decease she subsequently wept bitter tears; for her a hundred thousand welcomes; for her the best that house held, while she was still so little as to be unable to guess how much out of their small means these people were giving her, how royally in their own poor way they were entertaining a child who it seemed scarcely likely would ever directly or indirectly benefit them in any way.

Not out of interested motives, however, did they welcome the little maiden; not because of any return they looked for did they welcome her to the farm, and make her free of house and byre, of stable, garden, orchard, and paddock. In those early days they wanted nothing from any one: in the latter days, when we make their acquaintance, they still wanted nothing from any one save a renewal of their still unexpired lease from Lord Glendare, and for that they were willing and able to pay. The rent had never yet been more than a temporary trouble to Amos Scott. The land was exceptionally good. The amount he paid for it exceptionally low. Stiff premiums had indeed twice been paid by Amos and his father, but they were able to afford them.

There is a great deal in “starting square.” They had done so, and by dint of prudence, economy, and hard labour, were enabled to keep themselves that ten pounds before the world which means affluence, instead of that ten pounds behind which means perpetual pauperism.

And for these reasons and many more, had Grace been thrice the heiress she was, and of age, and holding her whole fortune in her own hand, it would have made no difference (pecuniarily) to the Scotts. They did not want gifts or loans, they could earn as much as they needed and desired, indeed, would have accepted nothing more. They could pay for their children’s schooling, and spared them to go to school except in the very height of hay-making, reaping, or potato-digging. Had Miss Moffat or her father offered to be at the sole expense of educating one of the children, they would have resented the idea almost as an insult, but when Grace, in her own quiet way, proposed to do a still greater thing, namely, teach the feeble one of the flock all that she knew herself, the parents caught at the notion; and the girl herself, still almost a child, gave her lessons with a sweet patience, with a determined perseverance, with a thoroughness and kindly encouragement Nettie O’Hara might have envied.

But she did nothing of the kind; she only laughed at Grace’s fancy for playing at schoolmistress.

“You can’t think, dear, how much I learn myself in teaching him,” said Grace, not in the least disturbed by her friend’s ridicule.

Once again Nettie laughed.

“If I had your fortune, I should not care how little I knew.”

“You would like to know how to spend it though,” said Grace, with a pretty sense of responsibility.

“Oh! somebody else will do that for you.”

“Never,” answered Grace, “never; Nettie, how often am I to tell you no one shall ever persuade me to leave Bayview and papa?”

“But your papa will spend it for you,” said Nettie, hastily drawing back her foot from the conversational hole into which she had unwittingly thrust it.

Now came Grace’s turn to laugh.

“Dear papa does not know how to spend his own,” she exclaimed; “and perhaps when I have money, I shall know as little what to do with it as he. But oh! Nettie, I hope I shall learn; I am trying so hard to understand what is wanted most in this world.”

“Money for everybody, I think,” Nettie retorted, a little bitterly. After all, the difference was great between the embryo heiress and the embryo governess. Perhaps Grace felt it to be so, for she embraced her friend tenderly, and Nettie certainly saw the distinction clearly, and attributed to it results that did not always accrue from the premises she imagined.

For instance she always fancied the welcome to Castle Farm was more cordial to Grace than to herself, because Grace had money and she none; whereas the Scotts would have greeted Grace the same had she not owned a stiver, and liked Nettie even less than was the case, had some benevolent person left her ten thousand a year.

Wonderfully quick are the wisest of the lower orders all the world over at reading character; shrewd even beyond their class are the Irish, and more especially the northern Irish, in detecting the faintest token of a false ring in the human coin. And, spite of her beauty, which had won such golden opinions from the gentlemen and ladies of Kingslough—both being for once unanimous in the matter—the Scotts thought it was a pity “Miss Grace was so wrapt up in that Miss Nettie.”

Nevertheless, in their own way, both husband and wife were unaffectedly grieved when they heard of the trouble Nettie had wrought for herself, and it was with subdued voice and grave face that Mrs. Scott said to her chance visitor, while Jerry took that “contrary divil Finn,” as he styled him, into the stable,—

“Miss Grace’ll have heard, sir, that Miss Nettie—Mrs. Brady, begging her pardon, has come home.”

“I do not think she has,” answered Mr. Moffat, with a sudden repression of manner which did not escape Mrs. Scott’s notice. “When did she come? where is she?”

“Where should she be, sir, but in her husband’s house?—bad luck to him—that’s where she is; and as for when she come home, I was over at my cousin’s two days ago—she’s in great trouble, having just buried her husband, the Lord help her, and nine children to fill and to find—and as I was coming home through the gloaming I met them on the car, Mr. Dan driving. He nodded to me and gave me the time of day. They were walking the horse down the Abbey brae, but she had her face covered with a veil and looked neither one way nor another. I thought to myself, ‘that’s a coming home for an O’Hara.’ She has made a rough bed for herself to lie on, and a purty creature, too.”

“Mrs. Scott,” said Mr. Moffat, “I wish you would answer me one question straightforwardly and in confidence, entirely in confidence you understand. What is this man Brady? what has he done, what has he left undone, to have such a mark placed against his name? As you are aware, I do not put myself in the way of hearing idle gossip; I disapprove of people who are never happy except when meddling in their neighbours’ business, but you know how it was with my little girl and Miss O’Hara—and—”

“God bless Miss Grace, she’ll want to be running off after Miss Nettie the minute she hears of her home-coming; but don’t let her, sir, don’t. Miss Nettie has made her bed, and neither man nor woman can help her to unmake it now, and don’t let Miss Grace try to meddle or to make. Don’t put it in anybody’s power to say Dan Brady ever spoke a word to her, or she to him.”

“Yes—yes, my good woman,” interposed Mr. Moffat testily, “I know all that, I know everybody is in the same story about Mr. Daniel Brady, but what I want to hear is, what has he done? Why do the well-educated and highly-civilized population of Kingslough denounce this really decidedly good-looking and rather well-mannered young man, as though he were a sinner past redemption? What has the man done?”

“Is it about Brady, sir, ye’re asking that question,” joined in a male voice at this juncture; and, looking round, Mr. Moffat beheld Amos Scott, who had just returned home. “If so be it is, I’ll make free to answer it myself? What has he done? what hasn’t he done, except what it was his right to do? that is more to the point. They say he forged his grandfather’s will; he broke his mother’s heart; he had a grudge against a man, and swore that about him which sent him beyond the seas; he has always the best of a bargain; ay, and there’s not a father in the county whose heart hadn’t need to be sore if he saw one of his girls even say, ‘Good mornin’, to Daniel Brady.”

“That’s it, is it?” commented Mr. Moffat, briefly. He knew enough of the people he lived among to understand the full significance of the latter part of Mr. Scott’s sentence. Parents had as a rule sufficient faith in their daughters to leave them to take care of themselves, and as a rule their daughters justified the trust reposed in them. Nevertheless girls were sometimes deceived, and the man who made it his occupation to lure them to “misfortune,” so the tender phrase went, was not likely to receive much toleration at the hands of the masses.

In a country like Ireland, where women have an exceptional liberty of action, speech, and manner—a liberty unknown even in England—it is natural that fathers, brothers, and husbands should resist the smallest encroachment on such freedom; should cast a libertine out from familiar intercourse with their families as though he were a leper.

If a man was bad let him consort with bad company, and refrain from bringing social and moral destruction into decent houses.

Mr. Daniel was bad and had consorted with bad company, and no respectable man cared to have much intimate acquaintance with him; and to his other sins he had now added the offence of having run off with a very lonely and pretty girl.

For that offence, however, Mr. Moffat felt no desire to quarrel with him. On the whole, he was perhaps rather pleased than otherwise that Nettie had chosen for her husband one whose position and character rendered further acquaintance between her and his daughter impossible.

Nettie had been as great a pest to him as it was possible for a young girl to prove to an elderly gentleman who spent much of his time in his library. It would be absurd to say that he grudged the preserves, and biscuits, and milk, the tea, and the bread and butter, wherewith Grace was wont to entertain her friend, but he did dislike Nettie’s perpetual presence. Golden curls, blue eyes, pink-and-white cheeks, did not make up his ideal of feminine perfection, and had he admired and liked Nettie ever so much, and he neither particularly liked nor admired her, it would still have been a burden and a weariness to him to see her so perpetually about the house.

To him she appeared as obnoxious and strange a visitor to have constantly hovering round the premises as a strange cat prowling over his flower-beds seems to a careful gardener.

He had never hoped to get completely rid of her, and yet, lo! in a moment, Mr. Brady had procured his deliverance. On the whole, therefore, Mr. Moffat was not disposed to judge Mr. Brady severely. Perhaps, on the whole, he felt pleased to think his code of morals was objectionable; possibly he did not fret because Mr. Brady had placed himself, and, as a matter of course, his wife, out of the pale of decent society.

Miss Nettie had chosen, and for the future Bayview would be free of that young lady at all events.

Such were the thoughts that passed through Mr. Moffat’s mind while Amos Scott continued a rambling tirade against Mr. Brady and his sins of omission and commission.

“You must have been away betimes this morning,” he remarked at length, feeling it would be only civil before he went to refer to some matter personal to his host.

“No, sir, I met th’ Airl a couple of miles on the other side of Kingslough, and would you please to tell Miss Grace it is all right? he has promised me the new lease.”

“You will have to pay for it, though, I suppose,” answered Mr. Moffat.

“Yes, sir; but thank God we have a pound or two to the fore, and we would rather pinch a bit, if need was, than leave th’ ould place.”

“That is natural,” remarked Mr. Moffat; and then, his leader having been comfortably disposed of by Jerry, he bade good-day to Mr. and Mrs. Scott, and slowly retraced his way to the main road, muttering maledictions against the “divisional” as he went.