George Macartney

“ He saw, from time to time, many men, of whose capacities we know he had the highest opinion, shut out from the hospital by the mere circumstance of their not having been apprentices; and two of these were the late Professor Macartney, of Dublin, and the present distinguished Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Professor Owen. And here we must pause to record one of our numerous obligations to the perceptivity and justice of Abernethy. ”

“ Barrow, Lord Macartney's private secretary, arrived at the drostdy of Graaff-Reinet, and met with a friendly reception from a body of farmers who had assembled purposely to welcome him. On the following morning Mr. Gerotz transferred the office and the records, and he assumed the duties of landdrost. ”

“ In 1774 he was made governor of Toome Castle, a sinecure worth 1,000l. a year, which he sold to pay debts contracted during his embassy to Russia.
In 1775 Macartney was appointed captain-general and governor of the Caribbee islands (Grenada, the Grenadines and Tobago) , and in 1776 was raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Macartney, of Lissanoure. He was on his post at Grenada in 1779 when that island was attacked, and after a gallant defence was captured by the French (cf. his papers in Brit. Mus. Egerton MS. 2135 ff. 54–72) . ”

“ Macartney took his seat in the Irish House of Peers in 1788, was made custos rotulorum of Antrim, a trustee of the linen manufacture, a member of the Irish privy council, and a colonel of yeomanry. In 1792 he was created Earl Macartney and Viscount Macartney of Dervock in the peerage of Ireland. ”

“ Macartney caught the splayed-out envelope from my hand, so sharply that the flap I didn't know I held tore away, and stayed in my fist as he gazed on the rest of the reversed envelope with his set-eyed stare. "'Take care, Macartney! Gold, life, everything—in danger!'" he read out blankly. "Why, it's some kind of a crazy warning to me! Only—nobody wants [Pg 108] my life, and I've no gold—if that's what he means! I——" but he broke down completely. "Old Thompson must have gone stark mad," he muttered. "I—it makes me heartsick!"
"I don't know," Dudley snapped unexpectedly. ”

“ I know what brought the wolves to howl around this house, if I don't know how you shoved Dudley out to them. I know it was a home-made raid you had down at the assay office, and—I've been to Skunk's Misery!"
"Well?" said Macartney thickly. [Pg 206]
"Well enough! I have Thompson's deuce of hearts you didn't see was missing, when you gave me back his pack! With any luck I'll pay you out for that, and our four mill men, and Dudley; not here, where you can fight and die quick, but outside—where they've things like gallows! Oh, you would, would you?" ”

“ But somehow the darkness round me did not smell like a mine, where men worked every day. It smelt cold, desolate, abandoned, like——
And suddenly I knew where Macartney's men had carried me when I was knocked out! It was no comfort to me that it was to the very place where I had meant to jail Macartney [Pg 217] and hide Paulette, where Charliet and I were to have stood off Macartney's men.
"Thompson's stope," I gasped. "It's there Macartney's put me!" I crawled, sick and dizzy, to what ought to have been the tunnel and the tunnel entrance, opening on the storm out of doors. ”

“ She's free and red-handed somewhere, if no one ever found out who railroaded her and Van Ruyne's emeralds out of the United States!"
What sent Dudley into a blazing rage was beyond me. But he fairly yelled at Macartney.
"Free she may be, but when you say 'red-handed' you say a lie! If Jimmy Van Ruyne was fool enough to think so, it was because no Van Ruyne ever could see a. b. spelled ab. D'ye know him? Well," as Macartney shook his head, "he's a rotter, if ever there was one! Got more money than he knows what to do [Pg 130] with and always chasing after women. ”

“ Half a mile farther on were food [Pg 275] and shelter in the Halfway shack—and it might as well have been in Heaven, for with Macartney's men cached in it I naturally could not take her there. Behind that, twenty-seven miles off, was Caraquet; but even a girl with a trained body like Paulette's could never make twenty-seven miles on top of all we'd done.
"It's no question of wanting you," I exclaimed angrily. "It is that I don't know what to do. But want you—when do you suppose I haven't wanted you, ever since the night I first saw you by Dudley's fire? ”

“ To suppose, that, under such an impression, our leading men would have hesitated to prevent it, would be to suppose their intellects weak, and their hearts corrupt and inhuman. I fancy it will be difficult to fasten on Lord Macartney either the one or the other; for he was wise and humane: those whom the disappointment of unreasonable expectations, or the malevolence of party, have induced to suspect his Lordship’s heart, have been forced by his conduct to revere his talents; and the breath of calumny has never touched the humanity of Sir Edward Hughes. ”

“ It was no wonder Macartney had stood stunned over that envelope, till Dudley and I believed him heartsick for his friend, for it must have been then that he remembered Thompson's cards,—that I guessed the old [Pg 186] man had just sat and played with, day in and day out, while he was a prisoner and about to die. Thompson could have written on them; and Macartney must have feared it, or he never would have stolen them from Billy Jones. ”

“ As the popular delirium subsided, and men began to reason coolly upon the subject, they disbelieved the assertions of Colonel Hamilton that Macartney had stabbed the duke, although it was universally admitted that he had been much too busy and presuming. Hamilton was shunned by all his former companions, and his life rendered so irksome to him, that he sold out of the Guards and retired to private life, in which he died heart-broken four years afterwards.
General Macartney surrendered about the same time, and was tried for murder in the Court of King's Bench. ”

“ Mrs. Macruadh was sitting in the little parlour, no one but Nancy in the house, when the door opened, and in came the wild-looking girl, draggled and spent, and dropped kneeling at her feet. Great masses of long black hair hung dripping with rain about her shoulders. Her dress was torn and wet, and soiled with clay from the road and earth from the shrubbery. One cheek was white, and the other had a red patch on it.
"My poor child!" cried the mother; "what has happened? Alister is away!"
"I know that," panted Mercy. ”

“ Better men will be at your door presently to put the same question, for they will do nothing without the Macruadh. We are no more on your land, great is our sorrow, chief, but we are of your blood, you are our lord, and your will is ours. You have been a nursing father to us, Macruadh!"
"I would fain be!" answered the chief.
"They will want to know whether these strangers have the right to turn us out; and if they have not the right to disseize, whether we have not the right to resist. If you would have us fight, and will head us, we will fall to a man—for fall we must ”

“ But he recovered his balance, and though he never regained his old ascendency, which had been that of a Ju-ju, he was able to feel himself, as he said, "Master in his own house," with a very real reserve of terrorism—if it should be wanted. The great thing, Macartney thought, was discipline, constant, watchful discipline. A man must bend everything to that. Women have to learn the virtue of giving up, as well as of giving. Giving is easy ”

“ Men fight many a phantom when they ought to be chipping at their shells. "Thou art the dreamer!" they cry to him who would wake them. "See how diligent we are to get on in the world! We labour as if we should never go out of it!" What they call the world is but their shell, which is all the time killing the infant Christ that houses with them.
Ian looked up to the sky, and breathed a deep breath. Mercy looked up in his face, and saw his strangely beautiful smile.
"What are you thinking of, Captain Macruadh?" ”

“ They were to do nothing now, before Paulette and Marcia, if their first instructions had been to ambush inside the shack to dispose of me when I got back from the Halfway,—which I had not been meant to do. I did not drop my gun hand, or fling the truth at Macartney. But I made no [Pg 200] move to pick up Marcia. I said, "How d'ye mean Dudley's killed? Who killed him?"
"Wolves!" If Macartney meant me to think he was too sick to answer properly he was not, for he spoke suddenly to the bunk-house men. "There is no good in your waiting round, or looking any more. They've got Mr. ”

“ Peregrine Palmer arrived, and the next day Alister called upon him.
Not unprepared for the proposal of the chief, Mercy's father had nothing to urge against it. Her suitor's name was almost an historical one, for it stood high in the home-annals of Scotland. And the new laird, who had always a vague sense of injury in the lack of an illustrious pedigree of his own to send forward, was not un willing that a man more justly treated than himself should supply the SOLATIUM to his daughter's children. He received the Macruadh, therefore, if a little pompously, yet with kindness. ”

“ The drinks, as you Yankees say, are upon me!"
"By the way," he added to McCarthy, as McAllister filled the glasses, "would you be so obliging as to describe the individual who so thought [Pg 140] fully notified you in regard to the loss of the jewelry?"
"Rather stout, well-dressed man, fat face, gray eyes," answered McCarthy, lighting a cigar. "Looked somethin' like this gentleman here," indicating the clubman. "Spoke with a kind of English accent. Nice appearin' feller, all right."
"By George! Wilkins!" ejaculated McAllister.
"Damn!" exploded Uncle Basil.
"The nerve of him!" muttered Barney. ”

“ As you peruse you may find it difficult to believe that Macartney himself—James Adolphus, that remarkable solicitor—could have possessed a quivering, winged soul fit to be stript, and have hidden it so deep. But he did though, and the inference is that everybody does. As for the lady, that is not so hard of belief. It very seldom is—with women. They sit so [Pg 2] much at windows, that pretty soon their eyes become windows themselves—out of which the soul looks darkling, but preening ”

“ Thenceforward he resided at 32 Avenue Road, Regent's Park, London, and died there on 1 Dec. 1891. He was buried at Harlow in Essex. A memorial service was held on the same day at Melbourne, when his old comrade, Dean Macartney, himself ninety-three years of age, who had come out with him in 1848, preached the sermon. ”

“ Doctor Macartney, who has gone to the seaside for a couple of months with her family, and who was quite ready, for a smart pecuniary consideration, to let her neatly appointed house even to the reckless Lefroys for the time being. ”

“ So the next day the poor women went again, and the chief went with them, their guard and servant. If there were any on the watch, they did not appear. The Macruadh fished out their creels, and put them to dry, then helped them to fill those they had borrowed for the occasion. Returning, he carried now the one, now the other creel, so that one of the women was always free. The new laird met them on the road, and recognized with a scornful pleasure the chief bending under his burden. ”

“ It maun be a sair vex to ye ’at ye’re naething but the factor.”
“If ye don’t mind your manners, Mistress Fin’lay,” said Mr Crathie in glowing indignation, “perhaps you’ll find that the factor is as much as the marquis, when he’s all there is for one.”
“Lord safe ’s! hear till ’im!” cried the Partaness. “Wha wad hae thoucht it o’ ’im? There’s fowk ’at it sets weel to tak upo’ them! His father, honest man, wad ne’er hae spoken like that to Meg Partan; but syne he was an honest man, though he was but the heid-shepherd upo’ the estate. ”

“ The Macruadh was meditating the power of the frost to break up the clods of the field, when he saw the girls close to him. He pulled in his cattle, and taking off his bonnet with one hand while the other held both reins—
"Excuse me, ladies," he said; "my animals are young, and not quite broken."
They were not a little surprised at such a reception, and were driven to conclude that the man must be the laird himself. They had heard that he cultivated his own land, but had not therefore imagined him labouring in his own person. ”

“ They jumped over a ditch into a place called the Nursery, and prepared for the combat. The Duke of Hamilton, turning to General Macartney, said, "Sir, you are the cause of this, let the event be what it will." Lord Mohun did not wish that the seconds should engage, but the duke insisted that "Macartney should have a share in the dance." All being ready, the two principals took up their positions, and fought with swords so desperately, that after a short time they both fell down mortally wounded. ”

“ In himself he was much beloved, and in love the blessed rule, blessed where understood, holds, that to him that hath shall be given, he only who has being fit to receive. The love the people bore to his father, both pastor and chief, crowned head and heart of Alister. Scarce man or woman of the poor remnant of the clan did not love the young Macruadh. ”

“ MacTavish bellowed with hoarse rage. "New East's all blazin'—Old Sump's like t' go next, an' then——! Arrrh, these eejit Hunkies, ramstam sooties out o' hell, t' burrn old Cumberland on me so! To go an'——"
"There, now, Mack, that's enough!" Connover snapped him short. Connover, the superintendent, was used to obedience or else fist-play; a lover of few words. This brawling fire-boss, mouthy, irate, alcoholic, was a red rag to him at any time, now trebly red.
"That's enough!" the "super" shouted. "Shut that there door, you! Want t' smoke us all out, here?"
MacTavish obeyed, chopfallen. ”