Tony Butler

An Irish legion, some five or six thousand devout Catholics and valiant soldiers, was a project that the Minister of War at once embraced. His Excellency saw Maitland on it, and talked over the whole plan. Maitland was himself to direct all its operations. Caffarelli would correspond with him from Naples, and, in case of any complication or difficulty, shroud the Minister from attack. Ample funds would be provided. The men could be engaged as laborers upon some great public work, and forwarded in small drafts to a convenient port. Arms could be easily procured from Liège. Officers could be readily obtained, either Irish or Poles or Hungarians, who could speak English. In a word, all the details had been well discussed and considered; and Maitland, on arriving in London, had again talked over the project with wise and crafty heads, whose prudent counsels showed him how little fit he was, personally, to negotiate directly with the Irish peasant, and how imperative above all things it was to depute this part of his task to some clever native, capable of employing the subordinates he needed. “Hide yourself,” said they, “in some out-of-the-way spot in Wales or Scotland; even the far North of Ireland will do; remain anywhere near enough to have frequent communication with your agent, but neither be seen nor known in the plot yourself. Your English talk and your English accent would destroy more confidence than your English gold would buy.”

Such an agent was soon found, – a man admirably adapted in many respects for the station. He had been an adventurer all his life; served with the French in Austria, and the Austrians in the Banat; held an independent command of Turks during the Crimean War; besides, episodically, having “done a little,” as he called it, on the Indian frontier with the Yankees; and served on the staff of Rosas, at La Plata; all his great and varied experiences tending to one solitary conviction, that no real success was ever to be attained in anything except by means of Irishmen; nor could order, peace, and loyalty be ever established anywhere without their assistance. If he was one of the bravest men living, he was one of the most pushing and impertinent. He would have maintained a point of law against the Lord Chancellor, and contested tactics with a Marshal of France. He thought himself the ornament of any society he entered, and his vanity, in matters of intellect, was only surpassed by his personal conceit. And now one word as to his appearance. With the aid of cleverly constructed boots he stood five feet four, but was squarely, stoutly built, broad in the chest, and very bow-legged; his head was large, and seemed larger from a mass of fiery red hair, of which he was immensely vain as the true Celtic color; he wore great whiskers, a moustache, and chin-tuft; but the flaming hue of these seemed actually tamed and toned down beside his eyes, which resembled two flaring carbuncles. They were the most excitable, quarrelsome, restless pair of orbs that ever beamed in a human head. They twinkled and sparkled with an incessant mischief, and they darted such insolent glances right and left as seemed to say, “Is there any one present who will presume to contradict me?”

His boundless self-conceit would have been droll if it had not been so offensive. His theory was this: all men detested him; all women adored him. Europe had done little better than intrigue for the last quarter of a century what country could secure his services. As for the insolent things he had said to kings and emperors, and the soft speeches that empresses and queens had made to himself, they would fill a volume. Believe him, and he had been on terms of more than intimacy in every royal palace of the Continent. Show the slightest semblance of doubt in him, and the chances were that he ‘d have had you “out” in the morning.

Amongst his self-delusions, it was one to believe that his voice and accent were peculiarly insinuating. There was, it is true, a certain slippery insincerity about them, but the vulgarity was the chief characteristic; and his brogue was that of Leinster, which, even to Irish ears, is insufferable.

Such was, in brief, the gentleman who called himself Major M’Caskey, Knight-Commander of various Orders, and C.S. in the Pope’s household, – which, interpreted, means Cameriere Secreto, – a something which corresponds to gentleman-in-waiting. Maitland and he had never met. They had corresponded freely, and the letters of the Major had by no means made a favorable impression upon Maitland, who had more than once forwarded extracts from them to the committees in London, pettishly asking, “if something better could not be found than the writer of this rubbish.” And yet, for the work before him, “the writer of this rubbish” was a most competent hand. He knew his countrymen well, – knew how to approach them by those mingled appeals to their love of adventure and love of gain; their passion for fighting, for carelessness, for disorder; and, above all, that wide uncertainty as to what is to come, which is, to an Irishman’s nature, the most irresistible of all seductions. The Major had established committees – in other words, recruiting-depots – in several county towns; had named a considerable number of petty officers; and was only waiting Maitland’s orders whether or not he should propose the expedition to adventurous but out-at-elbows young fellows of a superior station, – the class from which officers might be taken. We have now said enough of him and the project that engaged him to admit of our presenting him to our readers in one of his brief epistles. It was dated, —

“Castle Dubbow, August – , 18 – .

“Sir, – I have the honor to report for your information that I yesterday enrolled in this town and neighborhood eighteen fine fellows for H. N. M. Two of them are returned convicts, and three more are bound over to come up for sentence at a future assizes, and one, whom I have named a corporal, is the notorious Hayes, who shot Captain Macon on the fair green at Ballinasloe. So you see there’s little fear that they’ll want to come back here when once they have attained to the style and dignity of Neapolitan citizens. Bounty is higher here by from sixteen to twenty shillings than in Meath; indeed, fellows who can handle a gun, or are anyways ready with a weapon, can always command a job from one of the secret clubs; and my experiences (wide as most men’s) lead me entirely to the selection of those who have shown any aptitude for active service. I want your permission and instruction to engage some young gentlemen of family and station, for the which I must necessarily be provided with means of entertainment. Tafel Gelt ist nicht Teufel’s Gelt, says the Austrian adage; and I believe a very moderate outlay, assisted by my own humble gifts of persuasion, will suffice. Séduction de M’Casky, was a proverb in the 8th Voltigeurs. You may ask a certain high personage in France who it was that told him not to despair on a particular evening at Strasbourg. A hundred pounds – better if a hundred and fifty – would be useful. The medals of his Holiness have done well, but I only distribute them in the lower ranks. Some titles would be very advisable if I am to deal with the higher class. Herewith you have a muster-roll of what has been done in two counties; and I say it without fear, not a man in the three kingdoms could have accomplished it but Miles M’Marmont could plan, but not execute; Masséna execute, but not organize; Soul could do none but the last. It is no vanity makes me declare that I combine all the qualities. You see me now ‘organizing;’ in a few days you shall judge me in the field; and, later on, if my convictions do not deceive me, in the higher sphere of directing the great operations of an army. I place these words in your hands that they may be on record. If M’Caskey falls, it is a great destiny cut off; but posterity will see that he died in the full conviction of his genius. I have drawn on you for thirty-eight, ten-and-six; and to-morrow will draw again for seventy-four, fifteen.

“Your note has just come. I am forced to say that its tone is not that to which, in the sphere I have moved, I have been accustomed. If I am to regard you as my superior officer, duty cries, ‘Submit.’ If you be simply a civilian, no matter how exalted, I ask explanation. The dinner at the Dawson Arms was necessary; the champagne was not excessive; none of the company were really drunk before ten o’clock; and the destruction of the furniture was a plaisanterie of a young gentleman from Louth who was going into holy orders, and might most probably not have another such spree in all his life again. Are you satisfied? If not, tell me what and where any other satisfaction may meet your wishes. You say, ‘Let us meet.’ I reply, ‘Yes, in any way you desire.’ You have not answered my demand – it was demand, not request – to be Count M’Caskey. I have written to Count Caffarelli on the subject, and have thoughts of addressing the king. Don’t talk to me of decorations. I have no room for them on the breast of my coat. I am forced to say these things to you, for I cannot persuade myself that you really know or understand the man you correspond with. After all, it took Radetzky a year, and Omar Pasha seventeen months, to arrive at that knowledge which my impatience, unjustly perhaps, complains that you have not attained to. Yet I feel we shall like each other; and were it not like precipitancy, I’d say, believe me, dear Maitland, very faithfully your friend,

“Miles M’Caskey.”

The answer to this was very brief, and ran thus: —

“Lyle Abbey, August.

“Sir, – You will come to Coleraine, and await my orders there, – the first of which will be to take no liberties of any kind with your obedient servant,

“Norman Maitland.

“Major M’Caskey, ‘The Dawson Arms, Castle Durrow.

“P. S. Avoid all English acquaintances on your road. Give yourself out to be a foreigner, and speak as little as possible.”

CHAPTER IX. MAITLAND’S FRIEND

“I don’t think I ‘ll walk down to the Burnside with you to-day,” said Beck Graham to Maitland, on the morning after their excursion.

“And why not?”

“People have begun to talk of our going off together alone, – long solitary walks. They say it means something – or nothing.”

“So, I opine, does every step and incident of our lives.”

“Well. You understand what I intended to say.”

“Not very clearly, perhaps; but I shall wait a little further explanation. What is it that the respectable public imputes to us?”

“That you are a very dangerous companion for a young lady in a country walk.”

“But am I? Don’t you think you are in a position to refute such a calumny?”

“I spoke of you as I found you.”

“And how might that be?”

“Very amusing at some moments; very absent at others; very desirous to be thought lenient and charitable in your judgments of people, while evidently thinking the worst of every one; and with a rare frankness about yourself that, to any one not very much interested to learn the truth, was really as valuable as the true article.”

“But you never charged me with any ungenerous use of my advantage; to make professions, for instance, because I found you alone.”

“A little – a very little of that – there was; just as children stamp on thin ice and run away when they hear it crack beneath them.”

“Did I go so far as that?”

“Yes; and Sally says, if she was in my place, she ‘d send papa to you this morning.”

“And I should be charmed to see him. There are no people whom I prefer to naval men. They have the fresh, vigorous, healthy tone of their own sea life in all they say.”

“Yes; you’d have found him vigorous enough, I promise you.”

“And why did you consult your sister at all?”

“I did not consult her; she got all out of me by cross-questioning. She began by saying, ‘That man is a mystery to me; he has not come down here to look after the widow nor Isabella; he’s not thinking of politics nor the borough; there ‘s no one here that he wants or cares for. What can he be at?’”

“Could n’t you have told her that he was one of those men who have lived so much in the world it is a luxury to them to live a little out of it? Just as it is a relief to sit in a darkened room after your eyes have been dazzled with too strong light. Could n’t you have said, He delights to talk and walk with me, because he sees that he may expand freely, and say what comes uppermost, without any fear of an unfair inference? That, for the same reason, – the pleasure of an unrestricted intercourse, – he wishes to know old Mrs. Butler, and talk with her, – over anything, in short? Just to keep mind and faculties moving, – as a light breeze stirs a lake and prevents stagnation?”

“Well. I ‘m not going to perform Zephyr, even in such a high cause.”

“Could n’t you have said, We had a pleasant walk and a mild cigarette together, —voilà tout?” said he, languidly.

“I think it would be very easy to hate you, – hate you cordially, – Mr. Norman Maitland.”

“So I’ve been told; and some have even tried it, but always unsuccessfully.”

“Who is this wonderful foreigner they are making so much of at the Castle and the Viceregal Lodge?” cried Mark, from one of the window recesses, where he was reading a newspaper. “Maitland, you who know all these people, who is the Prince Caffarelli?”

“Caffarelli! it must be the Count,” cried Maitland, hurrying over to see the paragraph. “The Prince is upwards of eighty; but his son, Count Caffarelli, is my dearest friend in the world. What could have brought him over to Ireland?”

“Ah! there is the very question he himself is asking about the great Mr. Norman Maitland,” said Mrs. Trafford, smiling.

“My reasons are easily stated. I had an admirable friend who could secure me a most hospitable reception. I came here to enjoy the courtesies of country home life in a perfection I scarcely believed they could attain to. The most unremitting attention to one’s comfort, combined with the wildest liberty.”

“And such port wine,” interposed the Commodore, “as I am free to say no other cellar in the province can rival.”

“Let us come back to your Prince or Count,” said Mark, “whichever he is. Why not ask him down here?”

“Yes; we have room,” said Lady Lyle; “the M’Clintocks left this morning.”

“By all means, invite him,” broke in Mrs. Trafford; “that is, if he be what we conjecture the dear friend of Mr. Maitland might and should be.”

“I am afraid to speak of him,” said Maitland; “one disserves a friend by any over-praise; but at Naples, and in his own set, he is thought charming.”

“I like Italians myself,” said Colonel Hoyle. “I had a fellow I picked up at Malta, – a certain Geronimo. I ‘m not sure he was not a Maltese; but such a salad as he could make! There was everything you could think of in it, – tomato, eggs, sardines, radishes, beetroot, cucumber.”

“Every Italian is a bit of a cook,” said Maitland, relieving adroitly the company from the tiresome detail of the Colonel. “I ‘ll back my friend Caffarelli for a dish of macaroni against all professional artists.”

While the Colonel and his wife got into a hot dispute whether there was or was not a slight flavor of parmesan in the salad, the others gathered around Maitland to hear more of his friend. Indeed, it was something new to hear of an Italian of class and condition. They only knew the nation as tenors or modellers or language masters. Their compound idea of Italian was a thing of dark skin and dark eyes; very careless in dress, very submissive in aspect, with a sort of subdued fire, however, in look, that seemed to say how much energy was only sleeping there! and when Maitland sketched the domestic ties of a rich magnate of the land, living a life of luxurious indolence, in a sort of childlike simplicity as to what engaged other men in other countries, without a thought for questions of politics, religion, or literature, living for mere life’s sake, he interested them much.

“I shall be delighted to ask him here,” said he, at last; “only let me warn you against disappointment. He’ll not be witty like a Frenchman, nor profound like a German, nor energetic like an Englishman; he ‘ll neither want to gain knowledge nor impart it. He’ll only ask to be permitted to enjoy the pleasures of a very charming society without any demand being made upon him to contribute anything; to make him fancy, in short, that he knew you all years and years ago, and has just come back out of cloud-land to renew the intimacy. Will you have him after this?”

“By all means,” was the reply. “Go and write your letter to him.”

Maitland went to his room, and soon wrote the following: —

“Caro Carlo mio, – Who’d have thought of seeing you in Ireland? but I have scarce courage to ask you how and why you came here, lest you retort the question upon myself. For the moment, however, I am comfortably established in a goodish sort of country-house, with some pretty women, and, thank Heaven, no young men save one son of the family, whom I have made sufficiently afraid of me to repress all familiarities. They beg me to ask you here, and I see nothing against it. We eat and drink very well. The place is healthy, and though the climate is detestable, it braces and gives appetite. We shall have, at all events, ample time to talk over much that interests us both, and so I say, Come!

“The road is by Belfast, and thence to Coleraine, where we shall take care to meet you. I ought to add that your host’s name is Sir Arthur Lyle, an Anglo-Indian, but who, thank your stars for it! being a civilian, has neither shot tigers nor stuck pigs. It will also be a relief to you to learn that there’s no sport of any kind in the neighborhood, and there cannot be the shade of a pretext for making you mount a horse or carry a gun, nor can any insidious tormentor persecute you with objects of interest or antiquity; and so, once again, Come – and believe me, ever your most cordial friend,

“N. Maitland.

“There is no reason why you should not be here by Saturday, so that, if nothing contrary is declared, I shall look out for you by that day; but write at all events.”

CHAPTER X. A BLUNDER

Sir Arthur Lyle was a county dignity, and somewhat fond of showing it. It is true he could not compete with the old blood of the land, or contest place with an O’Neil or an O’Hara; but his wealth gave him a special power, and it was a power that all could appreciate. There was no mistake about one who could head a subscription by a hundred pounds, or write himself patron of a school or a hospital with a thousand! And then his house was more splendid, his servants more numerous, their liveries finer, his horses better, than his neighbors; and he was not above making these advantages apparent. Perhaps his Indian experiences may have influenced his leanings, and taught him to place a higher value on show and all the details of external greatness. On everything that savored of a public occasion, he came with all the pomp and parade of a sovereign. A meeting of poor-law guardians, a committee of the county infirmary, a board of railway directors, were all events to be signalized by his splendid appearance.

His coach and four, and his outriders – for he had outriders – were admirable in all their appointments. Royalty could not have swung upon more perfectly balanced nor easier springs, nor could a royal team have beat the earth with a grander action or more measured rhythm. The harness – bating the excess of splendor – was perfect. It was massive and well-fitting. As for the servants, a master of the horse could not have detected an inaccurate fold in their cravats, nor a crease in their silk stockings. Let the world be as critical or slighting as it may, these things are successes. They are trifles only to him who has not attempted them. Neither is it true to say that money can command them; for there is much in them that mere money cannot do. There is a keeping in all details, – a certain “tone” throughout, and, above all, a discipline the least flaw in which would convert a solemn display into a mockery.

Neighbors might criticise the propriety or canvass the taste of so much ostentation, but none, not the most sarcastic or scrutinizing, could say one word against the display itself; and so, when on a certain forenoon the dense crowd of the market-place scattered and fled right and left to make way for the prancing leaders of that haughty equipage, the sense of admiration overcame even the unpleasant feeling of inferiority, and that flunkeyism that has its hold on humanity felt a sort of honor in being hunted away by such magnificence.

Through the large square – or Diamond, as the Northerns love to call it – of the town they came, upsetting apple-stalls and crockery-booths, and frightening old peasant women, who, with a goose under one arm and a hank of yarn under the other, were bent on enterprises of barter and commerce. Sir Arthur drove up to the bank, of which he was the governor, and on whose steps, to receive him, now stood the other members of the board. With his massive gold watch in hand, he announced that the fourteen miles had been done in an hour and sixteen minutes, and pointed to the glossy team, whose swollen veins stood out like whipcord, to prove that there was no distress to the cattle. The board chorused assent, and one – doubtless an ambitious man – actually passed his hand down the back sinews of a wheeler, and said, “Cool as spring-water, I pledge my honor.” Sir Arthur smiled benignly, looked up at the sky, gave an approving look at the sun as though to say, “Not bad for Ireland,” and entered the bank.

It was about five o’clock in the same evening when the great man again appeared at the same place; he was flushed and weary-looking. Some rebellious spirits – is not the world full of them? – had dared to oppose one of his ordinances. They had ventured to question some subsidy that he would accord or refuse to some local line of railroad. The opposition had deeply offended him; and though he had crushed it, it had wounded him. He was himself the bank! – its high repute, its great credit, its large connection, were all of his making; and that same Mr. M’Candlish who had dared to oppose him was a creature of his own, – that is, he had made him a tithe-valuator, or a road-inspector, or a stamp distributor, or a something or other of the hundred petty places which he distributed just as the monks of old gave alms at the gates of their convents.

Sir Arthur whispered a word to Mr. Boyd, the secretary, as he passed downstairs. “How does M’Candlish stand with the bank? He has had advances lately; send me a note of them.” And thus, bent on reprisals, he stood waiting for that gorgeous equipage which was now standing fully ready in the inn yard, while the coachman was discussing a chop and a pot of porter. “Why is not he ready?” asked Sir Arthur, impatiently.

“He was getting a nail in Blenheim’s off foreshoe, sir,” was the ready reply; and as Blenheim was a blood bay sixteen-three, and worth two hundred and fifty pounds, there was no more to be said; and so Sir Arthur saw the rest of the board depart on jaunting-cars, gigs, or dog-carts, as it might be, – humble men with humble conveyances, that could take them to their homes without the delays that wait upon greatness.

“Anything new stirring, Boyd?” asked Sir Arthur, trying not to show that he was waiting for the pleasure of his coachman.

“No, sir; all dull as ditch-water.”

“We want rain, I fancy, – don’t we?”

“We ‘d not be worse for a little, sir. The after-grass, at least, would benefit by it.”

“Why don’t you pave this town better, Boyd? I ‘m certain it was these rascally stones twisted Blenheim’s shoe.”

“Our corporation will do nothing, sir, – nothing,” said the other, in a whisper.

“Who is that fellow with the large whiskers, yonder, – on the steps of the hotel? He looks as if he owned the town.”

“A foreigner, Sir Arthur; a Frenchman or a German, I believe. He came over this morning to ask if we knew the address of Mr. Norman Maitland.”

“Count Caffarelli,” muttered Sir Arthur to himself; “what a chance that I should see him! How did he come?”

“Posted, sir; slept at Cookstown last night, and came here to breakfast.”

Though the figure of the illustrious stranger was very far from what Sir Arthur was led to expect, he knew that personal appearance was not so distinctive abroad as in England, and so he began to con over to himself what words of French he could muster, to make his advances. Now, had it been Hindostanee that was required, Sir Arthur would have opened his negotiations with all the florid elegance that could be wished; but French was a tongue in which he had never been a proficient, and, in his ordinary life, had little need of. He thought, however, that his magnificent carriage and splendid horses would help him out of the blunders of declensions and genders, and that what he wanted in grammar he could make up in greatness. “Follow me to M’Grotty’s,” said he to his coachman, and took the way across the square.