The Earl's promise

It was a remarkable fact that although of the three ladies who kept the only circulating library Kingslough boasted one was deaf, a second nearly blind, and the third afflicted with lameness, nowhere in the town was such early and reliable information concerning important events to be obtained as in the small room lined with shelves, which were filled with ragged, soiled, generally imperfect, and sometimes wholly disabled books, which had passed through hundreds of hands, and done duty at various other circulating libraries before settling down for life amongst the inhabitants of that dull little seaport town.

In the pleasant days of old, few people in Ireland worked for their living. There was an idea abroad that to labour for daily bread could by no possibility be the right thing to do; and accordingly, as human beings found it impossible to live without bread, or at all events potatoes, as pennies were very scarce, even if the price of provisions was inconceivably low, a convenient series of fictions obtained amongst the Hibernians, that if any work was done it was performed entirely as a matter of pleasure or occupation.

Even the very labourers, most of whom had their few acres of rush or daisy-covered land, farmed by their wives and children, went to the estate on which they chanced to be employed, “Just to oblige the masther.”

The work was done fairly and the wages received regularly, but it pleased them to make the latter seem by a figure of speech rather an accident than a result.

And the same spirit pervaded all ranks. If a young man more clever and more fortunate than his fellows had a secretary’s place offered, he accepted it merely, so partial friends declared, because “Lord This or That was so good to him; treated dear George like his own son.” Did a boy enter the navy, “he could never, his relations declared, be happy on shore, so they were glad to humour his whim.” Did a brother scrape together all the family resources and purchase a commission in a cavalry regiment, the girls were delighted, because “Charley never was happy out of the saddle.” Did a man read hard and study hard and go in for the bar, mamma murmured in a delicious brogue, “Henery had always a turn for arguing and making speeches;” whilst if a keen young fellow were sufficiently lucky to own an attorney uncle, friendly enough and rich enough to find money to article the lad to himself, the matter was generally put in some such light as this:—

“Jack is going to Dublin to help his uncle. The dear old man’s business—almost entirely confined to the nobility—is increasing just as fast as his health is failing, and so he asked Jack if he would mind assisting him, and of course it will not be any extra expense to us, as he would not have Jack there and give him nothing.”

As regards the Church, I really think there was no need to put a false gloss on the motives of any man who entered it then, so far at least as money was concerned. The great prizes were not many. The pay of curates was ridiculously small; so small indeed that few save those possessed of adequate private means could have been found among their ranks; but perhaps this was the only career concerning which a fair amount of candour prevailed.

To India, indeed, men did not scruple to say they were going, simply and purely to make their fortunes; but then India was a long way off, and the fortunes men had made there, the undying names they had left behind, the pages their deeds filled in history, read like the enchanted story of some eastern romance.

By a similar convenient fiction to that employed by men, if ladies worked, it was because they liked employment, not because they earned money.

Supposing “family circumstances” induced Miss Brennan to take up her abode in Sir Thomas O’Donnell’s family in the capacity of governess or companion, she stayed there, so sympathetic friends would have it, not because Sir Thomas paid her fifty pounds a year, but because Lady O’Donnell liked her so much she would not hear of her returning to her friends.

Supposing Mrs. Waller and her daughters, driven to their wits’ ends how to make the ends of their income meet! Visitors were expected to believe that all these screens Martha painted so beautifully; all these purses, glittering with beads and tassels and clasps and fancy rings, which Pauline knitted or netted with a grace and dexterity really pleasant to behold; all those pen-wipers and scent-bags and card-baskets and paper mats which the younger fry manufactured as industriously as though they had been inmates of a deaf and dumb school, were intended merely as free gifts to their richer relations.

That was the way Mrs. Waller put and her friends received it; with the light in which the richer relations viewed those works of art we have, happily, nothing to do. The delusion was kept up at one end; perhaps there was execration at the other. There are some persons who to this hour cannot behold an embroidered sofa-pillow, a set of dinner-mats adorned with robins seated on twigs; rural cottages surrounded with trees; foreign temples, and vague sea-views, all executed in Indian ink; a smoking-cap; a pair even of ornamented braces,—without groaning in spirit over memories of black mail, levied in the name of fancy work, that are recalled by the sight.

When however at a period, many years previous to the commencement of this story, Mrs. Larkins and her two maiden sisters, the Misses Healey, opened the circulating library to which reference has been made, Kingslough was fairly non-plussed what to do with, what to say about them. In its way it was as bad as though an Agnew had started a mill, or a Riley taken a shop and expressed his intention of serving behind a counter. The thing could not be concealed. There lay the awful communication,—

“Have you heard,” wrote Mrs. Lefroy, “that the Healeys are going to lend out books?” and then of course it became that recipient’s duty to write to some one else. “My dear, what do you think? The Healeys are having shelves put up all round their front parlour, and intend making it into a public library,” and so forth, and so forth, till at last some spinster more courageous or more inquisitive than her neighbours, went boldly and asked Mrs. Larkins what she meant by it all.

Mrs. Larkins was equal to the occasion, she had not been left a widow twice for nothing.

“Yes; it is very sad,” she sighed, “but we cannot give up our charities.”

Now for many a long day the Healeys had, on the plea of giving to the poor, let their first floor to an old bachelor who, dying one morning minus a will, left them without a legacy or a lodger.

At once Kingslough accepted the Library, and its raison d’être. The idea had been suggested and the means found for carrying it into effect by a dreadfully vulgar man who made money somehow out of flax, in a distant part of the kingdom, and who having been brother to the deceased Larkins had given many a stray pound note to Larkins’ widow, but all this was discreetly kept in the background.

“We cannot give up our charities,” settled the business satisfactorily at Kingslough, and why should it not have done so when every hour, even at the present enlightened day, men and women have, as a matter of common politeness, to swallow doses of social humbug as large if not larger.

Not very long ago, the writer of this was expatiating to a friend on the bad taste of a wealthy and titled lady who not merely insisted on writing very poor verses but expected to be paid for them.

“Ah! it is for her charities!” was the reply. “What! with an income of—?” Not to be personal the amount shall remain blank. The reader, even if left to his internal consciousness, cannot fill it in at too high a figure.

“Yes, she is so good; she gives so much away.”

In comparison to that what could Kingslough offer?—Kingslough, which has, I am credibly informed, gone on with the times, and now prints its own newspaper, and has its books from Mudie.

There was no Mudie when the Misses Healey converted the parlour of their “dear papa’s” house into a room free to the public.

A second door was put up, to enable the hall door to stand hospitably open, and soon their friends began to consider the Library a pleasant sort of place in which to meet and while away half an hour. They visited the Misses Healey, in fact, and borrowed a book or so from them. And thus the ladies kept a roof over their heads, and retained their standing in society. If they did make charity an excuse, who amongst us, friends, has been so invariably straightforward that he shall dare to throw the first stone at them.

Let the man who has never played with that which is worse than lying—equivocation—stand up and condemn them. Charity begins at home, the worldly-wise tell us, and Mrs. Larkins and her sisters, who were in grievous need, bestowed it there. No beggar in the street was, after a fashion, poorer than they, and so they remembered their own need first.

But when all this was done they had still something left; a pot of jam for a sick child, a basin of soup for a weakly mother, tea-leaves with capabilities of tea still in them, for the old women, who loved their cup as their husbands loved their “glass;” clothes shabby and thin and patched, it is true, but still clothes for some half-clad beggar, and a few shillings even it might be in the course of the year given in cases where nothing but money could be of any use.

They gave what they could, and the beggars curtseyed to them, and even the young reprobates of the town—there were reprobates, alas! in Kingslough, dull as it was—sometimes lifted their hats, and always refrained from jeering remarks when the deaf sister and the blind paced along the Parade arm-in-arm together.

Further to the credit of the town, be it stated, certain hours were by the non-élite set apart for their own visits to the Library. These hours were either very early or very late. They did not wish to intrude when Miss Healey had visitors, and in return Miss Healey acted towards them the part of a mother, and only recommended them such books as she could warrant from previous perusal to be perfectly innocuous.

Mrs. Larkins and Miss Healey might indeed safely have been planted guard, not merely over the morals of Kingslough, but of the then coming generation.

Could the old darlings rise from their graves, what would they think of the literature of the present day?

If a girl, attracted by a particularly taking title, remarked, laying hands on the book, “I think I will have that, Miss Healey,” Miss Healey would turn upon her a wizened face, a pair of spectacles, and a brown front, and say,—

“My dear, you must not have that. It is a gentleman’s book.”

What awful iniquity lay concealed under that phrase perhaps the gentlemen of Kingslough could have explained. Certain am I no woman in the place excepting Mrs. Larkins and her sisters knew. Neither did the “lower orders.” Had Miss Healey belonged to the strictest sect of professing Christians, her spectacles could not more diligently have searched profitable and proper reading for the young men and the young women who, being able slowly and painfully to spell out a story, were willing to pay their hardly-earned pennies for the privilege of doing so.

No new novels found their way to Kingslough. The youngest Miss Healey’s shelves boasted must have been at least ten years of age, but they were fresh to the subscribers as the last work of fiction published. As a rule Miss Kate Healey, who was deaf, read aloud to her two sisters, but occasionally books would arrive, some scenes in which trenched so closely on their forbidden ground, that Miss Healey would decide against their public perusal, and undertake herself silently to grapple with the enemy.

As a woman twice married (“To think of it,” as Grace Moffat observed, “while so many women never are married even once”), on Mrs. Larkins this duty would naturally have devolved, but time and other causes had rendered her eye-sight so bad that reading was impossible.

Indeed she could not find any other means of employing the shining hours except knitting; and “How thankful I ought to be,” said the poor lady, “that I learned to knit while I could see!” And accordingly, morning, noon, and night, she plied her needles incessantly. Counterpanes, curtains, shawls, reticules, purses, grew under her bony fingers. Miss Kate read the tenderest love passages to the accompaniment of those clicking needles; and while Miss Healey, in the interests of public morality, was silently perusing some questionable scene, that everlasting knitting still made way.

Three busily idle women were those sisters; always at work, and yet always at leisure, always ready to hear news, equally ready to repeat news. They were to Kingslough as Reuter to the civilized world. The Library was the central telegraph office of the day to the little town. Had it ever occurred to the Misses Healey to issue a newspaper, they might have produced edition after edition containing the very latest intelligence concerning the last piece of scandal.

To them, late on the evening of that summer’s day when this story opens, entered, in great haste, a burly, red-faced, hearty-looking man, arrayed in a driving-coat, and having a large kerchief muffled about his neck.

“My compliments, ladies, your most obedient servant,” he said, with a sort of rough gallantry which set upon him not amiss, uncovering at the same time, and holding his hat in his hand in a manner which might put a modern dandy to shame. “I want you to find me a book for my little wife. Plenty of love, and millinery, and grand society; you know her taste, Miss Healey. I am in a hurry, for I stopped longer at Braher fair than I intended, and my poor girl always thinks some accident has happened to me if I am late. Thank you. I knew you could lay hands on what I asked for in a minute,” and he was about to depart, when Mrs. Larkins, full of the one subject of the day, interposed with—

“Oh! Mr. Mooney, and what do you think about this sad affair?”

“What sad affair?” he inquired.

“Dear! dear! haven’t you heard?” exclaimed Miss Healey and Mrs. Larkins in amiable unison. “Miss O’Hara has been missing ever since ten o’clock this morning, and no one knows what has happened to her.”

“Miss O’Hara?” he repeated. “Miss Riley’s niece? a pretty young lady with a quantity of light hair?” and he made a gesture supposed to indicate curls flowing over the shoulder.

“Yes; and they have been dragging the river.”

“And watching the tide,” added Miss Healey.

“And poor dear Miss Riley is heartbroken.”

“And she has sent for General Riley.”

“I am very much mistaken if I did not see the young lady this morning,” said Mr. Mooney, a serious expression overclouding his frank, jovial face.

“You? oh, Mr. Mooney! where?” cried the two ladies.

“Why, driving along the Kilcullagh Road with—”

“With whom?” in a shriek.

“With Mr. Dan Brady. I thought I had seen the young lady’s face somewhere before, but his mare trotted past me so quick I could not identify it at the moment. Now, however, I am sure the lady was Miss O’Hara.” There was a moment’s silence.

“He must have abducted her, then,” broke out the sisters, but Mr. Mooney shook his head.

“It is a bad job, I am afraid,” he observed; “but she has good friends, that is one comfort. I do not think my little woman will want to read any novels to-night, Miss Healey, when I tell her this story. I am sorry, ay, that I am.” And with another bow, for the Misses Healey were too high and mighty personages for him to offer his hand, Mr. Mooney, with the books in his capacious pockets, passed out into the street, mounted his gig, untied the reins he had knotted round the rail of the dash-board, said, “Now, Rory,” to his horse, a great powerful roan, and started off towards home at a good round pace, thinking the while how grieved his delicate wife would be to hear of this great trouble which had befallen respectable people.

“It is enough to make a man glad he has none of his own,” murmured Mr. Mooney to himself, in strict confidence, and this must be considered as going great lengths, since if Mr. Mooney had one bitter drop in his cup, it was the fact that no living child had ever been born to him; that he had neither son, nor daughter, nothing to love or to love him except the little “wife,” who beguiled the weary hours of her invalid existence with stories of lords and ladies, of fond men and foolish maidens, of brave attire and brilliant halls, of everything farthest removed from the actual experience of her own monotonous, though most beautiful and pathetic life.

Meanwhile Miss Healey having screamed the tidings brought by Mr. Mooney into Miss Kate’s least deaf ear, the three stood for a moment, so to say, at arms.

“Anne,” said Mrs. Larkins at length, “Miss Riley ought to know this,” but Anne shrank back appalled at the idea of being the bearer of such tidings.

“Some one ought to go after them now, this minute,” said Miss Kate.

“Poor, poor Miss Riley!” exclaimed Miss Healey. “Yes,” began Mrs. Larkins impatiently, “that is all very well, but something should be done.”

“I’ll tell you what,” exclaimed Miss Healey, fairly driven into a corner, which might excuse, though not perhaps justify her form of speech. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll put on my bonnet and shawl, and let Jane know what we have heard.”

“The very best thing you could do,” said Mrs. Larkins. So Miss Healey limped slowly off and told that “delightful Jane” the news.