Castle Richmond Part 8

For Lady Fitzgerald, though she was gentle and silent, was not a sorrowful woman--otherwise than she was made so by seeing her husband's sorrow. She had been to him a loving partner, and no man could more tenderly have returned a wife's love than he had done.

One would say that all had run smoothly at Castle Richmond since the house had been made happy, after some years of waiting, by the birth of an eldest child and heir. But, nevertheless, those who knew most of Sir Thomas saw that there was a peac.o.c.k on the wall.

It is only necessary to say further a word or two as to the other ladies of the family, and hardly necessary to say that. Mary and Emmeline Fitzgerald were both cheerful girls. I do not mean that they were boisterous laughers, that in waltzing they would tear round a room like human steam-engines, that they rode well to hounds as some young ladies now-a-days do--and some young ladies do ride very well to hounds; nor that they affected slang, and decked their persons with odds and ends of masculine costume. In saying that they were cheerful, I by no means wish it to be understood that they were loud.

They were pretty, too, but neither of them lovely, as their mother had been--hardly, indeed, so lovely as that pale mother was now, even in these latter days. Ah, how very lovely that pale mother was, as she sat still and silent in her own place on the small sofa by the slight, small table which she used! Her hair was gray, and her eyes sunken, and her lips thin and bloodless; but yet never shall I see her equal for pure feminine beauty, for form and outline, for pa.s.sionless grace, and sweet, gentle, womanly softness. All her sad tale was written upon her brow; all its sadness and all its poetry.

One could read there the fearful, all but fatal danger to which her childhood had been exposed, and the daily thanks with which she praised her G.o.d for having spared and saved her.

But I am running back to the mother in attempting to say a word about her children. Of the two, Emmeline, the younger, was the more like her; but no one who was a judge of outline could imagine that Emmeline, at her mother's age, would ever have her mother's beauty.

Nevertheless, they were fine, handsome girls, more popular in the neighbourhood than any of their neighbours, well educated, sensible, feminine, and useful; fitted to be the wives of good men.

And what shall I say of Miss Letty? She was ten years older than her brother, and as strong as a horse. She was great at walking, and recommended that exercise strongly to all young ladies as an antidote to every ill, from love to chilblains. She was short and dapper in person; not ugly, excepting that her nose was long, and had a little b.u.mp or excrescence at the end of it. She always wore a bonnet, even at meal times; and was supposed by those who were not intimately acquainted with the mysteries of her toilet, to sleep in it; often, indeed, she did sleep in it, and gave unmusical evidence of her doing so. She was not illnatured; but so strongly prejudiced on many points as to be equally disagreeable as though she were so. With her, as with the world in general, religion was the point on which those prejudices were the strongest; and the peculiar bent they took was horror and hatred of popery. As she lived in a country in which the Roman Catholic was the religion of all the poorer cla.s.ses, and of very many persons who were not poor, there was ample scope in which her horror and hatred could work. She was charitable to a fault, and would exercise that charity for the good of Papists as willingly as for the good of Protestants; but in doing so she always remembered the good cause. She always clogged the flannel petticoat with some Protestant teaching, or burdened the little coat and trousers with the pains and penalties of idolatry.

When her brother had married the widow Talbot, her anger with him and her hatred towards her sister-in-law had been extreme. But time and conviction had worked in her so thorough a change, that she now almost wors.h.i.+pped the very spot in which Lady Fitzgerald habitually sat. She had the faculty to know and recognize goodness when she saw it, and she had known and recognized it in her brother's wife.

Him also, her brother himself, she warmly loved and greatly reverenced. She deeply grieved over his state of body and mind, and would have given all she ever had, even her very self, to restore him to health and happiness.

The three children of course she loved, and petted, and scolded; and as children bothered them out of all their peace and quietness.

To the girls she was still almost as great a torment as in their childish days. Nevertheless, they still loved, and sometimes obeyed her. Of Herbert she stood somewhat more in awe. He was the future head of the family, and already a Bachelor of Arts. In a very few years he would probably a.s.sume the higher t.i.tle of a married man of arts, she thought; and perhaps the less formidable one of a member of Parliament also. Him, therefore, she treated with deference. But, alas! what if he should become a Puseyite!

CHAPTER VI.

THE KANTURK HOTEL, SOUTH MAIN STREET, CORK.

All the world no doubt knows South Main Street in the city of Cork.

In the "ould" ancient days, South and North Main Streets formed the chief thoroughfare through the city, and hence of course they derived their names. But now, since Patrick Street, and Grand Parade, and the South Mall have grown up, Main Street has but little honour. It is crowded with second-rate tobacconists and third-rate grocers; the houses are dirty, and the street is narrow; fas.h.i.+onable ladies never visit it for their shopping, nor would any respectable commercial gent stop at an inn within its purlieus.

But here in South Main Street, at the time of which I am writing, there was an inn, or public-house, called the Kanturk Hotel. In dear old Ireland they have some foibles, and one of them is a pa.s.sion for high nomenclature. Those who are accustomed to the sort of establishments which are met with in England, and much more in Germany and Switzerland, under the name of hotels, might be surprised to see the place in South Main Street which had been dignified with the same appellation. It was a small, dingy house of three stories, the front door of which was always open, and the pa.s.sage strewed with damp, dirty straw. On the left-hand side as you entered was a sitting-room, or coffee-room as it was announced to be by an appellation painted on the door. There was but one window to the room, which looked into the street, and was always clouded by a dingy-red curtain. The floor was uncarpeted, nearly black with dirt, and usually half covered with fragments of damp straw brought into it by the feet of customers. A strong smell of hot whisky and water always prevailed, and the straggling mahogany table in the centre of the room, whose rickety legs gave way and came off whenever an attempt was made to move it, was covered by small greasy circles, the impressions of the bottoms of tumblers which had been made by the overflowing tipple. Over the chimney there was a round mirror, the framework of which was bedizened with all manner of would-be gilt ornaments, which had been cracked, and twisted, and mended till it was impossible to know what they had been intended to represent; and the whole affair had become a huge receptacle of dust, which fell in flakes upon the chimney-piece when it was invaded. There was a second table opposite the window, more rickety than that in the centre; and against the wall opposite to the fireplace there was an old sideboard, in the drawers of which Tom, the one-eyed waiter, kept knives and forks, and candle-ends, and bits of bread, and dusters.

There was a sour smell, as of old rancid b.u.t.ter, about the place, to which the guests sometimes objected, little inclined as they generally were to be fastidious. But this was a tender subject, and not often alluded to by those who wished to stand well in the good graces of Tom. Many things much annoyed Tom; but nothing annoyed him so fearfully as any a.s.sertion that the air of the Kanturk Hotel was not perfectly sweet and wholesome.

Behind the coffee-room was the bar, from which f.a.n.n.y O'Dwyer dispensed dandies of punch and goes of brandy to her father's customers from Kanturk. For at this, as at other similar public-houses in Irish towns, the greater part of the custom on which the publican depends came to him from the inhabitants of one particular country district. A large four-wheeled vehicle, called a long car, which was drawn by three horses, and travelled over a mountain road at the rate of four Irish miles an hour, came daily from Kanturk to Cork, and daily returned. This public conveyance stopped in Cork at the Kanturk Hotel, and was owned by the owner of that house, in partners.h.i.+p with a brother in the same trade located in Kanturk. It was Mr. O'Dwyer's business to look after this concern, to see to the pa.s.sengers and the booking, the oats, and hay, and stabling, while his well-known daughter, the charming f.a.n.n.y O'Dwyer, took care of the house, and dispensed brandy and whisky to the customers from Kanturk.

To tell the truth, the bar was a much more alluring place than the coffee-room, and f.a.n.n.y O'Dwyer a more alluring personage than Tom, the one-eyed waiter. This Elysium, however, was not open to all comers--not even to all comers from Kanturk. Those who had the right of entry well knew their privilege; and so also did they who had not.

This sanctum was screened off from the pa.s.sage by a window, which opened upwards conveniently, as is customary with bar-windows; but the window was blinded inside by a red curtain, so that f.a.n.n.y's stool near the counter, her father's wooden arm-chair, and the old horsehair sofa on which favoured guests were wont to sit, were not visible to the public at large.

Of the up-stair portion of this establishment it is not necessary to say much. It professed to be an hotel, and accommodation for sleeping was to be obtained there; but the well-being of the house depended but little on custom of this cla.s.s.

Nor need I say much of the kitchen, a graphic description of which would not be pleasing. Here lived a cook, who, together with Tom the waiter, did all that servants had to do at the Kanturk Hotel.

From this kitchen lumps of beef, mutton chops, and potatoes did occasionally emanate, all perfumed with plenteous onions; as also did fried eggs, with bacon an inch thick, and other culinary messes too horrible to be thought of. But drinking rather than eating was the staple of this establishment. Such was the Kanturk Hotel in South Main Street, Cork.

It was on a disagreeable, cold, sloppy, raw, winter evening--an evening drizzling sometimes with rain, and sometimes with sleet--that an elderly man was driven up to the door of the hotel on a one-horse car--or jingle, as such conveniences were then called in the south of Ireland. He seemed to know the house, for with his outside coat all dripping as it was he went direct to the bar-window, and as f.a.n.n.y O'Dwyer opened the door he walked into that warm precinct. There he encountered a gentleman, dressed one would say rather beyond the merits of the establishment, who was taking his ease at full length on f.a.n.n.y's sofa, and drinking some hot compound which was to be seen in a tumbler on the chimney-shelf just above his head. It was now six o'clock in the evening, and the gentleman no doubt had dined.

"Well, Aby; here I am, as large as life, but as cold as death. Ugh; what an affair that coach is! f.a.n.n.y, my best of darlings, give me a drop of something that's best for warming the c.o.c.kles of an old man's heart."

"A young wife then is the best thing in life to do that, Mr.

Mollett," said f.a.n.n.y, sharply, preparing, however, at the same time some mixture which might be taken more instantaneously.

"The governor's had enough of that receipt already," said the man on the sofa; or rather the man now off the sofa, for he had slowly arisen to shake hands with the new comer.

This latter person proceeded to divest himself of his dripping greatcoat. "Here, Tom," said he, "bring your old Cyclops eye to bear this way, will you. Go and hang that up in the kitchen; not too near the fire now; and get me something to eat: none of your mutton chops; but a beefsteak if there is such a thing in this benighted place.

Well, Aby, how goes on the war?"

It was clear that the elderly gentleman was quite at home in his present quarters; for Tom, far from resenting such impertinence, as he would immediately have done had it proceeded from an ordinary Kanturk customer, declared "that he would do his honour's bidding av there was such a thing as a beefsteak to be had anywhere's in the city of Cork."

And indeed the elderly gentleman was a person of whom one might premise, judging by his voice and appearance, that he would probably make himself at home anywhere. He was a hale hearty man, of perhaps sixty years of age, who had certainly been handsome, and was even now not the reverse. Or rather, one may say, that he would have been so were it not that there was a low, restless, cunning legible in his mouth and eyes, which robbed his countenance of all manliness.

He was a hale man, and well preserved for his time of life; but nevertheless, the extra rubicundity of his face, and certain incipient pimply excrescences about his nose, gave tokens that he lived too freely. He had lived freely; and were it not that his const.i.tution had been more than ordinarily strong, and that constant exercise and exposure to air had much befriended him, those pimply excrescences would have shown themselves in a more advanced stage.

Such was Mr. Mollett senior--Mr. Matthew Mollett, with whom it will be soon our fate to be better acquainted.

The gentleman who had slowly risen from the sofa was his son, Mr.

Mollett junior--Mr. Abraham Mollett, with whom also we shall become better acquainted. The father has been represented as not being exactly prepossessing; but the son, according to my ideas, was much less so. He also would be considered handsome by some persons--by women chiefly of the f.a.n.n.y O'Dwyer cla.s.s, whose eyes are capable of recognizing what is good in shape and form, but cannot recognize what is good in tone and character. Mr. Abraham Mollett was perhaps some thirty years of age, or rather more. He was a very smart man, with a profusion of dark, much-oiled hair, with dark, copious mustachoes--and mustachoes being then not common as they are now, added to his otherwise rakish, vulgar appearance--with various rings on his not well-washed hands, with a frilled front to his not lately washed s.h.i.+rt, with a velvet collar to his coat, and patent-leather boots upon his feet.

Free living had told more upon him, young as he was, than upon his father. His face was not yet pimply, but it was red and bloated; his eyes were bloodshot and protruding; his hand on a morning was unsteady; and his pa.s.sion for brandy was stronger than that for beefsteaks; whereas his father's appet.i.te for solid food had never flagged. Those who were intimate with the family, and were observant of men, were wont to remark that the son would never fill the father's shoes. These family friends, I may perhaps add, were generally markers at billiard-tables, head grooms at race-courses, or other men of that sharp, discerning cla.s.s. Seeing that I introduce these gentlemen to my readers at the Kanturk Hotel, in South Main Street, Cork, it may be perhaps as well to add that they were both Englishmen; so that mistakes on that matter may be avoided.

The father, as soon as he had rid himself of his upper coat, his dripping hat, and his goloshes, stood up with his back to the bar-room fire, with his hands in his trousers-pockets, and the tails of his coat stuck inside his arms.

"I tell you, Aby, it was cold enough outside that infernal coach. I'm blessed if I've a morsel of feeling in my toes yet. Why the d---- don't they continue the railway on to Cork? It's as much as a man's life is worth to travel in that sort of way at this time of the year."

"You'll have more of it then if you intend going out of town to-morrow," said the son.

"Well; I don't know that I shall. I shall take a day to consider of it I think."

"Consideration be bothered," said Mollett junior; "strike when the iron's hot; that's my motto."

The father here turned half round to his son and winked at him, nodding his head slightly towards the girl, thereby giving token that, according to his ideas, the conversation could not be discreetly carried on before a third person.

"All right," said the son, lifting his joram of brandy and water to his mouth; an action in which he was immediately imitated by his father, who had now received the means of doing so from the hands of the fair f.a.n.n.y.

"And how about a bed, my dear?" said Mollett senior; "that's a matter of importance too; or will be when we are getting on to the little hours."

"Oh, we won't turn you out, Mr. Mollett," said f.a.n.n.y; "we'll find a bed for you, never fear."

"That's all right then, my little Venus. And now if I had some dinner I'd sit down and make myself comfortable for the evening."

As he said this, f.a.n.n.y slipped out of the room, and ran down into the kitchen to see what Tom and the cook were doing. The Molletts, father and son, were rather more than ordinary good customers at the Kanturk Hotel, and it was politic therefore to treat them well. Mr. Mollett junior, moreover, was almost more than a customer; and for the sake of the son f.a.n.n.y was anxious that the father should be well treated.

"Well, governor, and what have you done?" said the younger man in a low voice, jumping up from his seat as soon as the girl had left them alone.

"Well, I've got the usual remittance from the man in Bucklersbury.

That was all as right as a trivet."

"And no more than that? Then I tell you what it is; we must be down on him at once."

"But you forget that I got as much more last month, out of the usual course. Come, Aby, don't you be unreasonable."

"Bother--I tell you, governor, if he don't--" And then Miss O'Dwyer returned to her sanctum, and the rest of the conversation was necessarily postponed.