Roland Cashel Volume Ii Part 25

COTTER.

An hour's sleep and a cold bath restored Linton to himself, and ere the guests of Tubbermore were stirring, he was up and ready for the day.

He dressed with more than usual care, and having ordered a horse to be saddled and a groom to follow him, he sauntered out into the park, taking the road that led to the village.

The groom rapidly overtook him; and then, mounting, he rode at a brisk trot down the road, and drew up at the door of the doctor's house. To his question, "If Mr. Tiernay were at home?" he received for answer, that "He had set out for Limerick that morning;" nor did the servant know when he might be expected back.

For a moment this intelligence appeared to derange his plans; but he rallied soon, and turning his horse's head towards Tubbermore, muttered to himself, "As well,--perhaps better as it is." He rode fast till he gained the wood, and then dismounting, he gave the horse to the groom, with directions to go home, as he would return on foot.

He stood looking after the horses as they retired, and it seemed as if his thoughts were following them, so intent was his gaze; but, long after they had disappeared, he remained standing in the same place, his features still wearing the same expression of highly-wrought occupation.

The spot where he stood was a little eminence, from which the view stretched, upon one side, over the waving woods of the demesne, and, on the other, showed glimpses of the Shannon, as, in its sweeping curves, it indented the margin of the grounds. Perhaps not another point could be found which displayed so happily the extent and importance of the demesne, and yet concealed so well whatever detracted from its picturesque effect. The neighboring village of Derra-heeny--a poor, straggling, ruinous street of thatched hovels, like most Irish villages--was altogether hidden from view; while of the great house itself,--an object with few pretensions to architectural elegance,--only so much was visible as indicated its size and extent. The little cottage of Tubber-beg, however, could be seen entire, glittering in the morning's sun like a gem, its bright-leaved hollies and dark laurels forming a little grove of foliage in the midst of winter's barrenness.

If this was by far the most striking object of the picture, it was not that which attracted most of Linton's attention. On the contrary, his eye ranged more willingly over the wide woods which stretched for miles along the river's side, and rose and fell in many a gentle undulation inland. A commonplace observer, had such been there to mark him, would have p.r.o.nounced him one pa.s.sionately devoted to scenery,--a man who loved to watch the pa.s.sing cloud-shadows of a landscape, enjoying with all a painter's delight the varying tints, the graceful lines, the sharp-thrown shadows, and the brilliant lights of a woodland picture; a deeper physiognomist would, however, have seen that the stern stare and the compressed lip, the intense preoccupation which every feature exhibited, did not denote a mind bent upon such themes.

"Tom Linton, of Tubbermore," said he, at length,--and it seemed as if uttering the words gave relief to his overburdened faculties, for his face relaxed, and his habitual easy smile returned to his mouth,--"Linton, of Tubbermore; it sounds well, too." And then the great game! that game for which I have pined so long and wished so ardently,--which I have stood by and seen others play and lose, where I could have won,--ay, won rank, honor, station, and fame. The heaviest curse that lies on men like me is to watch those who rise to eminence in the world, and know their utter shallowness and incapacity. There will soon be an end to that now.

"Stand by, gentlemen; make way, my Lords Charles and Harry; it is Tom Linton's turn--not Linton the 'adventurer,' as you were gracious enough to call him--not the bear-leader of a marquis, or the hanger-on of his grace the duke, but your equal in rank and fortune--more than your equal in other things; the man who knows you all thoroughly, not fancying your deficiencies and speculating on your shortcomings, as your vulgar adversaries, your men of cotton const.i.tuencies, are wont to do, but the man who has seen you in your club and your drawing-room, who has eaten, drunk, betted, played, and lived with you all! who knows your tactics well, and can expound your 'aristocratic prejudices better than ever a Quaker of them all!'--Not but," said he, after a pause, "another line would satisfy me equally. The peerage, with such a fortune as this, is no inordinate ambition; a few years in the House, of that dogged, unmanageable conduct Englishmen call independence--a capriciousness in voting--the repute of refusing office, and so on. There's no originality in the thought, but it succeeds as well as if there were! Besides, if hard pressed, I can be a Romanist, and, as times go, with every party; that is a strong claim. And why not Lord Linton? I have no doubt"--and he laughed as he spoke this--"there _is_ a peerage in the family already, if I only knew where to look for it!

"And now, sufficient of speculation! to open the campaign!" So saying, he descended the knoll and took the path which led to the cottage. As he drew near the wicket, he saw a man lounging beside it, in all that careless indifference which an Irish peasant can a.s.sume, and soon perceived it was Tom Keane, the gatekeeper.

"Good-morrow, Tom; how comes it you are up here so early?"

"'T is in throuble I am, your honer," said he, taking off his hat, and putting on that supplicating look so characteristic of his cla.s.s. "The master's going to turn me out of the little place beyant."

"What for?"

"For nothing at all, your honer: that's just it; but ould Kennyf.e.c.k put him up to it."

"Up to what? That seems the whole question."

"Your honer may remimber, that when you came here first, the cattle of the neighbors was used to come and pick a mouthful of gra.s.s,--and poor gra.s.s it was,--bekase there was no way of keeping them out. Well, when the master came down, and all the people, by coorse the cows and pigs couldn't be let in as afore; for, as the agint said, it was a disgrace to see them under the nose of the quality, running about as if it was Donnybrook fair! 'Don't let them appear here again, Tom Keane,' says he, 'or it will be worse for you.' And sorra one ever I let in since that, till it was dark night. But ould Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k, the other evening, takes it into his head to walk into the park, and comes right into a crowd of two-year-old bulls, and did n't know a bit where he was, till a man called out, 'Lie down on your face, for the love of the Virgin, or you are a dead man! The bullsheens is comin'!' And down he lay, sure enough, and hard work they had to get him up afterwards, for the herd went over him as the man drov' them off; and what between bruises and fear, he kept his bed two days; but the worst of it was, the spalpeens said that they paid threepence apiece for the bullsheens every night for the gra.s.s, and it was to me they gave it."

"Which, of course, was untrue?" said Linton, smiling knowingly.

"By coorse it was!" said Tom, with a laugh, whose meaning there was no mistaking; "and so, I 'm to be turned out of 'the gate,' and to lose my few acres of ground, and be thrun on the wide world, just for sake of an attorney!"

"It is very hard,--very hard indeed."

"Is n't it now, your honer?"

"A case of dest.i.tution, completely; what the newspapers call 'extermination.'"

"Exactly, sir,--tarnination, and nothing less."

"But how comes it that you are up here, on that account?"

"I was thinking, sir, if I saw Miss Mary, and could get her to spake a word to the master,--they say she can do what she plazes with him."

"Indeed!--who says so?"

"The servants' hall says it; and so does Mr. Corrigan's ould butler. He towld me the other day that he hoped he 'd be claning the plate up at the big house before he died."

"How so?" said Linton, affecting not to catch the intention of the remark.

"Just that he was to be butler at the hall when the master was married to Miss Mary."

"And so, I suppose, this is very likely to happen?"

"Sure yer honer knows betther than ignorant craytures like us; but faix, if walking about in the moonlight there, among the flowers, and talking together like whisperin', is any sign, I would n't wonder if it came about."

"Indeed! and they have got that far?"

"Ay, faith!" said Tom, with a significance of look only an Irishman or an Italian can call up.

"Well, I had no suspicion of this," said Linton, with a frankness meant to invite further confidence.

"An' why would yer honer? Sure was n't it always on the evenings, when the company was all together in the great house, that Mr. Cashel used to steal down here and tie his horse to the wicket, and then gallop back again at full speed, so that the servants towld me he was never missed out of the room!"

"And does she like him,--do they say she likes him?"

"Not like him wid a place such as this!" said Tom, waving his hand towards the wide-spreading fields and woods of the demesne. "Bathershin!

sure the Queen of England might be proud of it!"

"Very true," said Linton, affecting to be struck by the shrewdness of the speaker.

"See, now," said Tom, who began to feel a certain importance from being listened to, "I know faymales well, and so I ought! but take the nicest, quietest, and most innocent one among them, and by my conscience ye 'll see, 't is money and money's worth she cares for more nor the best man that ever stepped! Tell her 'tis silk she'll be wearin', and goold in her ears, and ye may be as ould and ogly as Tim Hogan at the cross roods!"

"You have n't a good opinion of the fair s.e.x, Thomas," said Linton, carelessly, for he was far less interested in his speculations than his facts. "Well, as to your own case,--leave that in my hands. I may not have all the influence of Miss Leicester, but I suspect that I can do what you want on this occasion." And without waiting for the profuse expressions of his grat.i.tude, Linton pa.s.sed on and entered the garden, through which a little path led directly to the door of the cottage.

"At breakfast, I suppose?" said Linton to the servant who received him.

"The master is, sir; but Miss Mary isn't well this morning."

"Nothing of consequence, I hope?"

"Only a headache from fatigue, sir." So saying, he ushered Linton, whose visits were admitted on the most intimate footing, into the room where Mr. Corrigan sat by himself at the breakfast-table.

"Alone, sir!" said Linton as he closed the door behind him, and conveying in his look an air of surprise and alarm.

"Yes, Mr. Linton, almost the only time I remember to have been so for many a year. My poor child has had a night of some anxiety, which, although bearing well at the time, has exacted its penalty at last in a slight attack of fever. It will, I trust, pa.s.s over in a few hours; and you,--where have you been; they said you had been absent for a day or two?"

"A very short ramble, sir,--one of business rather than pleasure. I learned suddenly--by a newspaper paragraph, too--that a distant relative of my mother's had died in the East, leaving a considerable amount of property to myself; and so, setting out, I arrived at Limerick, intending to sail for Liverpool, when, who should I meet, almost the first person I saw, but my agent, just come in haste from London, to confer with me on the subject. The meeting was so far agreeable, that it saved me a journey I had no fancy for, and also put me in possession of the desired information regarding the property. My agent, speaking of course from imperfect knowledge, calls it a large--what a man like myself would style--a very large fortune."

"I give you joy, with all my heart," cried Corrigan, grasping his hand in both his, and shaking it cordially. "When wealth descends to men who have shown their ability to maintain an honorable station without it, the chances are greatly in favor of its being n.o.bly and generously employed."

"How I hope that I may not disgrace your theory," said Linton, "for I am not ashamed to a.s.sert that I have fulfilled the first condition of the category. With little else but good birth and a fair education, I had to start in the race against others with every aid of fortune; and if I have not reached a more elevated position, I can say that the obstacle lay rather in my own scruples than my incapacity. I declined Parliamentary life because I would not be a nominee; I had a glancing suspicion that my time would come, too, when, without other check upon my motives than the voice of conscience, I should stand in the British Senate a free and independent member. If I have waited patiently for this hour, I hope I have not abused the leisure interval, and that I may bring to the public service something besides the zeal of one who feels the importance of his trust."

"There is no failure with intentions pure and honorable as these," said Corrigan, warmly. "It does not need your talents, Mr. Linton, to insure success in such a path; one half of _your_ ability, so n.o.bly backed, would reach the goal. And now tell me, if I be not indiscreet in asking some of your plans, what place do you mean to stand for?"

"Our good borough of Derraheeny," said Linton, half smiling. "I am in a measure committed to continue my canva.s.s there, and, indeed, have already entered into securities to keep my pledge. I see these words sound a little mysteriously, but I intend to explain them; only I must ask one favor of you. I hope, before I leave the room, to show that I have, if not a claim upon your generosity, at least a plea to warrant my request. My entreaty is this, that you will never divulge to any one what I shall now tell you."