Читать книгу The Fortunes Of Glencore - Lever Charles James - Страница 2

Where that singularly beautiful inlet of the sea known in the west of Ireland as the Killeries, after narrowing to a mere strait, expands into a bay, stands the ruin of the ancient Castle of Glencore. With the bold steep sides of Ben Creggan behind, and the broad blue Atlantic in front, the proud keep would seem to have occupied a spot that might have bid defiance to the boldest assailant. The estuary itself here seems entirely landlocked, and resembles, in the wild, fantastic outline of the mountains around, a Norwegian fiord, rather than a scene in our own tamer landscape. The small village of Leenane, which stands on the Galway shore, opposite to Glencore, presents the only trace of habitation in this wild and desolate district, for the country around is poor, and its soil offers little to repay the task of the husbandman. Fishing is then the chief, if not the sole, resource of those who pass their lives in this solitary region; and thus in every little creek or inlet of the shore may be seen the stout craft of some hardy venturer, and nets, and tackle, and such-like gear, lie drying on every rocky eminence. We have said that Glencore was a ruin; but still its vast proportions, yet traceable in massive fragments of masonry, displayed specimens of various eras of architecture, from the rudest tower of the twelfth century to the more ornate style of a later period; while artificial embankments and sloped sides of grass showed the remains of what once had been terrace and “parterre,” the successors, it might be presumed, of fosse and parapet. Many a tale of cruelty and oppression, many a story of suffering and sorrow, clung to those old walls, for they had formed the home of a haughty and a cruel race, the last descendant of which died at the close of the past century. The Castle of Glencore, with the title, had now descended to a distant relation of the house, who had repaired and so far restored the old residence as to make it habitable, – that is to say, four bleak and lofty chambers were rudely furnished, and about as many smaller ones fitted for servant accommodation; but no effort at embellishment, not even the commonest attempt at neatness, was bestowed on the grounds or the garden; and in this state it remained for some five-and-twenty or thirty years, when the tidings reached the little village of Leenane that his lordship was about to return to Glencore, and fix his residence there.

Such an event was of no small moment in such a locality, and many were the speculations as to what might be the consequence of his coming. Little, or indeed nothing, was known of Lord Glencore; his only visit to the neighborhood had occurred many years before, and lasted but for a day. He had arrived suddenly, and, taking a boat at the ferry, as it was called, crossed over to the Castle, whence he returned at nightfall, to depart as hurriedly as he came.

Of those who had seen him in this brief visit the accounts were vague and most contradictory. Some called him handsome and well built; others said he was a dark-looking, downcast man, with a sickly and forbidding aspect. None, however, could record one single word he had spoken, nor could even gossips pretend to say that he gave utterance to any opinion about the place or the people. The mode in which the estate was managed gave as little insight into the character of the proprietor. If no severity was displayed to the few tenants on the property, there was no encouragement given to their efforts at improvement; a kind of cold neglect was the only feature discernible, and many went so far as to say that if any cared to forget the payment of his rent, the chances were it might never be demanded of him; the great security against such a venture, however, lay in the fact that the land was held at a mere nominal rental, and few would have risked his tenure by such an experiment.

It was little to be wondered at that Lord Glencore was not better known in that secluded spot, since even in England his name was scarcely heard of. His fortune was very limited, and he had no political influence whatever, not possessing a seat in the Upper House; so that, as he spent his life abroad, he was almost totally forgotten in his own country.

All that Debrett could tell of him was comprised in a few lines, recording simply that he was sixth Viscount Glencore and Loughdooner; born in the month of February, 180-, and married in August, 18 – , to Clarissa Isabella, second daughter of Sir Guy Clifford, of Wytchley, Baronet; by whom he had issue, Charles Conyngham Massey, born 6th June, 18 – . There closed the notice.

Strange and quaint things are these short biographies, with little beyond the barren fact that “he had lived” and “he had died;” and yet, with all the changes of this work-a-day world, with its din, and turmoil, and gold-seeking, and “progress,” men cannot divest themselves of reverence for birth and blood, and the veneration for high descent remains an instinct of humanity. Sneer as men will at “heaven-born legislators,” laugh as you may at the “tenth transmitter of a foolish face,” there is something eminently impressive in the fact of a position acquired by deeds that date back to centuries, and preserved inviolate to the successor of him who fought at Agincourt or at Cressy. If ever this religion shall be impaired, the fault be with those who have derogated from their great prerogative, and forgotten to make illustrious by example what they have inherited illustrious by descent.

When the news first reached the neighborhood that a lord was about to take up his residence in the Castle, the most extravagant expectations were conceived of the benefits to arise from such a source. The very humblest already speculated on the advantages his wealth was to diffuse, and the thousand little channels into which his affluence would be directed. The ancient traditions of the place spoke of a time of boundless profusion, when troops of mounted followers used to accompany the old barons, and when the lough itself used to be covered with boats, with the armorial bearings of Glencore floating proudly from their mastheads. There were old men then living who remembered as many as two hundred laborers being daily employed on the grounds and gardens of the Castle; and the most fabulous stories were told of fortunes accumulated by those who were lucky enough to have saved the rich earnings of that golden period.

Colored as such speculations were with all the imaginative warmth of the west, it was a terrible shock to such sanguine fancies when they beheld a middle-aged, sad-looking man arrive in a simple postchaise, accompanied by his son, a child of six or seven years of age, and a single servant, – a grim-looking old dragoon corporal, who neither invited intimacy nor rewarded it. It was not, indeed, for a long time that they could believe that this was “my lord,” and that this solitary attendant was the whole of that great retinue they had so long been expecting; nor, indeed, could any evidence less strong than Mrs. Mulcahy’s, of the Post-office, completely satisfy them on the subject. The address of certain letters and newspapers to the Lord Viscount Glencore was, however, a testimony beyond dispute; so that nothing remained but to revenge themselves on the unconscious author of their self-deception for the disappointment he gave them. This, it is true, required some ingenuity, for they scarcely ever saw him, nor could they ascertain a single fact of his habits or mode of life.

He never crossed the “Lough,” as the inlet of the sea, about three miles in width, was called. He as rigidly excluded the peasantry from the grounds of the Castle; and, save an old fisherman, who carried his letter-bag to and fro, and a few laborers in the spring and autumn, none ever invaded the forbidden precincts.

Of course, such privacy paid its accustomed penalty; and many an explanation, of a kind little flattering, was circulated to account for so ungenial an existence. Some alleged that he had committed some heavy crime against the State, and was permitted to pass his life there, on the condition of perpetual imprisonment; others, that his wife had deserted him, and that in his forlorn condition he had sought out a spot to live and die in, unnoticed and unknown; a few ascribed his solitude to debt; while others were divided in opinion between charges of misanthropy and avarice, – to either of which accusations his lonely and simple life fully exposed him.

In time, however, people grew tired of repeating stories to which no new evidence added any features of interest. They lost the zest for a scandal which ceased to astonish, and “my lord” was as much forgotten, and his existence as unspoken of, as though the old towers had once again become the home of the owl and the jackdaw.

It was now about eight years since “the lord” had taken up his abode at the Castle, when one evening, a raw and gusty night of December, the little skiff of the fisherman was seen standing in for shore, – a sight somewhat uncommon, since she always crossed the “Lough” in time for the morning’s mail.

“There’s another man aboard, too,” said a bystander from the little group that watched the boat, as she neared the harbor; “I think it’s Mr. Craggs.”

“You ‘re right enough, Sam, – it’s the Corporal; I know his cap, and the short tail of hair he wears under it. What can bring him at this time of night?”

“He’s going to bespeak a quarter of Tim Healey’s beef, maybe,” said one, with a grin of malicious drollery.

“Mayhap it’s askin’ us all to spend the Christmas he’d be,” said another.

“Whisht! or he ‘ll hear you,” muttered a third; and at the same instant the sail came clattering down, and the boat glided swiftly past, and entered a little natural creek close beneath where they stood.

“Who has got a horse and a jaunting-car?” cried the Corporal, as he jumped on shore. “I want one for Clifden directly.”

“It’s fifteen miles – devil a less,” cried one.

“Fifteen! no, but eighteen! Kiely’s bridge is brack down, and you ‘ll have to go by Gortnamuck.”

“Well, and if he has, can’t he take the cut?”

“He can’t.”

“Why not? Did n’t I go that way last week?”

“Well, and if you did, did n’t you lame your baste?”

“‘T was n’t the cut did it.”

“It was – sure I know better – Billy Moore tould me.”

“Billy’s a liar!”

Such and such-like comments and contradictions were very rapidly exchanged, and already the debate was waxing warm, when Mr. Craggs’s authoritative voice interposed with —

“Billy Moore be blowed! I want to know if I can have a car and horse?”

“To be sure! why not? – who says you can’t?” chimed in a chorus.

“If you go to Clifden under five hours my name isn’t Terry Lynch,” said an old man in rabbitskin breeches.

“I ‘ll engage, if Barny will give me the blind mare, to drive him there under four.”

“Bother!” said the Rabbitskin, in a tone of contempt.

“But where’s the horse?” cried the Corporal.

“Ay, that’s it,” said another; “where’s the horse?”

“Is there none to be found in the village?” asked Craggs, eagerly.

“Divil a horse, barrin’ an ass. Barny’s mare has the staggers the last fortnight, and Mrs. Kyle’s pony broke his two knees on Tuesday carrying sea-weed up the rocks.”

“But I must go to Clifden; I must be there to-night,” said Craggs.

“It’s on foot, then, you’ll have to do it,” said the Rabbitskin.

“Lord Glencore’s dangerously ill, and needs a doctor,” said the Corporal, bursting out with a piece of most uncommon communicativeness. “Is there none of you will give his horse for such an errand?”

“Arrah, musha! – it’s a pity!” and such-like expressions of compassionate import, were muttered on all sides; but no more active movement seemed to flow from the condolence, while in a lower tone were added such expressions as, “Sorra mend him – if he wasn’t a naygar, wouldn’t he have a horse of his own? It’s a droll lord he is, to be begging the loan of a baste!”

Something like a malediction arose to the Corporal’s lips; but restraining it, and with a voice thick from passion, he said, —

“I ‘m ready to pay you – to pay you ten times over the worth of your – ”

“You need n’t curse the horse, anyhow,” interposed Rabbitskin, while with a significant glance at his friends around him, he slyly intimated that it would be as well to adjourn the debate, – a motion as quickly obeyed as it was mooted; for in less than five minutes Craggs was standing beside the quay, with no other companion than a blind beggar-woman, who, perfectly regardless of his distress, continued energetically to draw attention to her own.

“A little fivepenny bit, my lord – the last trifle your honor’s glory has in the corner of your pocket, that you ‘ll never miss, and that ‘ll sweeten ould Molly’s tay to-night? There, acushla, have pity on ‘the dark,’ and that you may see glory – ”

But Craggs did not wait for the remainder, but, deep in his own thoughts, sauntered down towards the village. Already had the others retreated within their homes; and now all was dark and cheerless along the little straggling street.

“And this is a Christian country! – this a land that people tell you abounds in kindness and good-nature!” said he, in an accent of sarcastic bitterness.

“And who’ll say the reverse?” answered a voice from behind, and, turning, he beheld the little hunchbacked fellow who carried the mail on foot from Oughterard, a distance of sixteen miles, over a mountain, and who was popularly known as “Billy the Bag,” from the little leather sack which seemed to form part of his attire. “Who ‘ll stand up and tell me it’s not a fine country in every sense, – for natural beauties, for antiquities, for elegant men and lovely females, for quarries of marble and mines of gould?”

Craggs looked contemptuously at the figure who thus declaimed of Ireland’s wealth and grandeur, and, in a sneering tone, said, —

“And with such riches on every side, why do you go barefoot – why are you in rags, my old fellow?”

“Is n’t there poor everywhere? If the world was all gould and silver, what would be the precious metals – tell me that? Is it because there’s a little cripple like myself here, that them mountains yonder is n’t of copper and iron and cobalt? Come over with me after I lave the bags at the office, and I ‘ll show you bits of every one I speak of.”

“I’d rather you’d show me a doctor, my worthy fellow,” said Craggs, sighing.

“I’m the nearest thing to that same going,” replied Billy. “I can breathe a vein against any man in the barony. I can’t say, that for any articular congestion of the aortic valves, or for a sero-pulmonic diathesis – d’ye mind? – that there isn’t as good as me; but for the ould school of physic, the humoral diagnostic touch, who can beat me?”

“Will you come with me across the lough, and see my lord, then?” said Craggs, who was glad even of such aid in his emergency.

“And why not, when I lave the bags?” said Billy, touching the leather sack as he spoke.

If the Corporal was not without his misgivings as to the skill and competence of his companion, there was something in the fluent volubility of the little fellow that overawed and impressed him, while his words were uttered in a rich mellow voice, that gave them a sort of solemn persuasiveness.

“Were you always on the road?” asked the Corporal, curious to learn some particulars of his history.

“No, sir; I was twenty things before I took to the bags. I was a poor scholar for four years; I kept school in Erris; I was ‘on’ the ferry in Dublin with my fiddle for eighteen months; and I was a bear in Liverpool for part of a winter.”

“A bear!” exclaimed Craggs. “Yes, sir. It was an Italian – one Pipo Chiassi by name – that lost his beast at Manchester, and persuaded me, as I was about the same stature, to don the sable, and perform in his place. After that I took to writin’ for the papers – ‘The Skibbereen Celt’ – and supported myself very well till it broke. But here we are at the office, so I ‘ll step in, and get my fiddle, too, if you ‘ve no objection.”

The Corporal’s meditations scarcely were of a kind to reassure him, as he thought over the versatile character of his new friend; but the case offered no alternative – it was Billy or nothing – since to reach Clifden on foot would be the labor of many hours, and in the interval his master should be left utterly alone. While he was thus musing, Billy reappeared, with a violin under one arm and a much-worn quarto under the other.

“This,” said he, touching the volume, “is the ‘Whole Art and Mystery of Physic,’ by one Fabricius, of Aquapendente; and if we don’t find a cure for the case down here, take my word for it, it’s among the morba ignota, as Paracelsus says.”

“Well, come along,” said Craggs, impatiently, and set off at a speed that, notwithstanding Billy’s habits of foot-travel, kept him at a sharp trot. A few minutes more saw them, with canvas spread, skimming across the lough, towards Glencore.

“Glencore – Glencore!” muttered Billy once or twice to himself, as the swift boat bounded through the hissing surf. “Did you ever hear Lady Lucy’s Lament?” And he struck a few chords with his fingers as he sang: —

And then there’s a chorus.”

“That’s a signal to us to make haste,” said the Corporal, pointing to a bright flame which suddenly shot up on the shore of the lough. “Put out an oar to leeward there, and keep her up to the wind.”

And Billy, perceiving his minstrelsy unattended to, consoled himself by humming over, for his own amusement, the remainder of his ballad.

The wind freshened as the night grew darker, and heavy seas repeatedly broke on the bow, and swept over the boat in sprayey showers.

“It’s that confounded song of yours has got the wind up,” said Craggs, angrily; “stand by the sheet, and stop your croning!”

“That’s an error vulgaris, attributing to music marine disasters,” said Billy, calmly; “it arose out of a mistake about one Orpheus.”

“Slack off there!” cried Craggs, as a squall struck the boat, and laid her almost over.

Billy, however, had obeyed the mandate promptly, and she soon righted, and held on her course.

“I wish they’d show the light again on shore,” muttered the Corporal; “the night is black as pitch.”

“Keep the top of the mountain a little to windward, and you ‘re all right,” said Billy. “I know the lough well; I used to come here all hours, day and night, once, spearing salmon.”

“And smuggling, too!” added Craggs.

“Yes, sir; brandy, and tay, and pigtail, for Mister Sheares, in Oughterard.”

“What became of him?” asked Craggs.

“He made a fortune and died, and his son married a lady!”

“Here comes another; throw her head up in the wind,” cried Craggs.

This time the order came too late; for the squall struck her with the suddenness of a shot, and she canted over till her keel lay out of water, and, when she righted, it was with the white surf boiling over her.

“She’s a good boat, then, to stand that,” said Billy, as he struck a light for his pipe, with all the coolness of one perfectly at his ease; and Craggs, from that very moment, conceived a favorable opinion of the little hunchback.

“Now we’re in the smooth water, Corporal,” cried Billy; “let her go a little free.”

And, obedient to the advice, he ran the boat swiftly along till she entered a small creek, so sheltered by the highlands that the water within was still as a mountain tarn.

“You never made the passage on a worse night, I ‘ll be bound,” said Craggs, as he sprang on shore.

“Indeed and I did, then,” replied Billy. “I remember – it was two days before Christmas – we were blown out to say in a small boat, not more than the half of this, and we only made the west side of Arran Island after thirty-six hours’ beating and tacking. I wrote an account of it for the ‘Tyrawly Regenerator,’ commencing with —

“‘The elemential conflict that with tremendious violence raged, ravaged, and ruined the adamantine foundations of our western coast, on Tuesday, the 23rd of December – ‘”

“Come along, come along,” said Craggs; “we’ve something else to think of.”

And with this admonition, very curtly bestowed, he stepped out briskly on the path towards Glencore.