Kearney

“ Kearney, and that bigoted old Tory, Tom Flood, were to be seen walking together, and in close confab. It will show them, at all events, that neither of us wants to make party capital out of this scrimmage, and that he who wants to affront one of us, cannot, on that ground, at least, count upon the other. Just look at the crowd that is watching us already! There ‘a a fellow neglecting the sale of his pig to stare at us, and that young woman has stopped gartering her stocking for the last two minutes in sheer curiosity about us.’
Kearney laughed heartily as he nodded assent. ”

“ Though such little jarring passages as those we have recorded were nothing uncommon between these two young men, they were very good friends on the whole, the very dissimilarity that provoked their squabbles saving them from any more serious rivalry. In reality, no two people could be less alike: Kearney being a slow, plodding, self-satisfied, dull man, of very ordinary faculties; while the other was an indolent, discursive, sharp-witted fellow, mastering whatever he addressed himself to with ease, but so enamoured of novelty that he rarely went beyond a smattering of anything. ”

“ In Kearney's there is always a wonderful collection of old women, bent figures shrouded in shawls who reach up scrawny fingers to take their little purchases from Mary Agnes, who presides sometimes at the bar, but more often at the shop that fronts it in the same room. In the gloom of a late afternoon these old women are as mystic as the swinging, chanting witches on a dark stage when the thunder-drum rolls and the lightning flashes by schedule. ”

“ Still Captain Kearney, although a brave and prudent officer—one who calculated chances, and who would not risk his men without he deemed that necessity imperiously demanded that such should be done—was averse to this attack, from his knowledge of the hay in which the brig was anchored; and although Mr Phillott and O’Brien both were of opinion that it should be a night attack, Captain Kearney decided otherwise. He considered that although the risk might be greater, yet the force employed would be more consolidated, and that those who would hold back in the night dare not do so during the day. ”

“ We pray for peace and quietness, and we educate a special class of people to keep us always wrangling. Where’s the sense of that?’
While Kearney poured out these words in a flow of fervid conviction, they had arrived at a little open space in the wood, from which various alleys led off in different directions. Along one of these, two figures were slowly moving side by side, whom Lockwood quickly recognised as Walpole and Nina Kostalergi. Kearney did not see them, for his attention was suddenly called off by a shout from a distance, and his son Dick rode hastily up to the spot. ”

“ I will not even say that when I have sat beside her, heard her low soft voice, and watched the tremor of that lovely mouth vibrating with wit, or tremulous with feeling, I have been all indifference; but this I will say, she shall not number me amongst the victims of her fascinations; and when she counts the trinkets on her wrist that record the hearts she has broken—a pastime I once witnessed—not one of them shall record the initial of Dick Kearney.’
With these brave words he mounted the narrow stair and knocked at his sister’s door. ”

“ That Kearney of Kilgobbin Castle should be reduced to tramping his way down the Bachelor’s Walk to the Four Courts, with a stuff bag carried behind him, was not to be thought of; but there were so many positions in life, so many situations for which that gifted creature the barrister of six years’ standing was alone eligible, that Kearney was very anxious his son should be qualified to accept that £1000 or £1800 a year which a gentleman could hold without any shadow upon his capacity, or the slightest reflection on his industry. ”

“ You’re a man, and well pleased when your enemy runs away; but if you were a woman, Mat Kearney, you’d rather he’d stand out boldly and meet you, and fight his battle to the end. But they haven’t done with me yet. I’ll put that little blackguard attorney, that said my letter was a lease, into Chancery; and it will go hard with me if I don’t have him struck off the rolls. There’s a small legacy of five hundred pounds left me the other day, and, with the blessing of Providence, the Common Pleas shall have it. Don’t shake your head, Mat Kearney. I’m not robbing any one. ”

“ I know that English theory of “the unsafe man,” by which people of unquestionable courage avoid contact with all schooled to other ways and habits than their own. I hate it. “I am unsafe,” to his thinking. Well, if having no reason to care for safety be sufficient, he is not far wrong. Dick Kearney, too, is not very cordial. He scarcely seconded his father’s invitation to me, and what he did say was merely what courtesy obliged. So that in reality, though the old lord was hearty and good-natured, I believe I am here now because Mademoiselle Nina commanded me, rather than from any other reason. ”

“ Soon the name of Miss Kathleen Kearney began to be heard often on people’s lips. People said that she was very clever at music and a very nice girl and, moreover, that she was a believer in the language movement. Mrs Kearney was well content at this. Therefore she was not surprised when one day Mr Holohan came to her and proposed that her daughter should be the accompanist at a series of four grand concerts which his Society was going to give in the Antient Concert Rooms. She brought him into the drawing-room, made him sit down and brought out the decanter and the silver biscuit-barrel. ”

“ He was measuring every inch of the man with an eye that had been trained for years to keep tabs on a multitude of marked and measured men.
“Would you mind coming over here––a step or two closer, Mr.––Gladwin?” he said tensely.
The thief stepped toward him and directly under the electrolier, while the others in the room stood like statues, looking on.
As Kearney continued his searching examination of the unflinching and still smiling man, whose head was 244 on a level with his and whose body was every inch as big and well set up, Captain Stone broke in nervously:
“What is it, Kearney?” ”

“ Do you know what he said to me the other day? “Molly,” says he, “when I know I can get between those bars there, and run round the college park in three minutes and twelve seconds, I feel that there’s not many a gaol in Ireland can howld, and the divil a policeman in the island could catch, me.”’ And she had to lean over the back of a chair to steady herself while she laughed at the conceit.
‘I think, after all,’ said Kearney, ‘I’d rather keep out of the scrape than trust to that way of escaping it.’
‘He wouldn’t,’ said she. ”

“ You will meet the great naturalist Lejoillie, who knows Mr Rochford as well as I do, and who will, I am sure, answer for his being a person of high character, and not at all likely to commit any act unworthy of a man of honour.—Oh! there’s my friend Kearney. Glad to see you back, my boy. You’ll join us. I must then send you to Castle Kearney, as your father is anxious to have you back to assist in looking after your young cousins, who, poor girls, will not only have to mourn the loss of their father and brother, but of their mother also, of whose life, I fear, there is but little hope. ”

“ Calling you the Viscount Kilgobbin, as I read a while ago, won’t confuse me about an old neighbour.’
‘Won’t you try a cutlet, godmother?’ asked Kate hurriedly.
‘Indeed I will, my dear. I don’t know why I was sending the man away. I never saw this way of dining before, except at the poorhouse, where each poor creature has his plateful given him, and pockets what he can’t eat.’ And here she laughed long and heartily at the conceit.
Kearney’s good-humour relished the absurdity, and he joined in the laugh, while Nina stared at the old woman as an object of dread and terror. ”

“ Kearney and her husband, Mr. Bell, Miss Healy and the young lady who had to recite the patriotic piece. Mrs. Kearney said that the committee had treated her scandalously. She had spared neither trouble nor expense and this was how she was repaid.
They thought they had only a girl to deal with and that, therefore, they could ride roughshod over her. But she would show them their mistake. They wouldn't have dared to have treated her like that if she had been a man. But she would see that her daughter got her rights: she wouldn't be fooled. ”

“ Kearney,’ said he sternly, ‘treason must now, to have any chance at all, be many-handed. We want not only all sorts of men, but in all sorts of places; and at tables where rebel opinions dared not be boldly announced and defended, we want people who can coquet with felony, and get men to talk over treason with little if any ceremony. Joe can do this—he can write, and, what is better, sing you a Fenian ballad, and if he sees he has made a mistake, he can quiz himself and his song as cavalierly as he has sung it! ”

“ Judge Shurtleff is also well acquainted with him; as is Captain Norton, to whom he is related.”
“All very fine, Mr Kearney; but people don’t go about the country with a troop of blacks at their heels without intending mischief. If he won’t order those negroes to give themselves up, we must try and catch them. If we can’t do so, it will have a very ugly look for him.”
But the blacks were active and cunning, and knew the country, which was more than their pursuers did. ”

“ Captain Hamlin Kearney is a robustly built western American, with the keen, squeezed, wind beaten eyes and obstinately enduring mouth of his profession. A curious ethnological specimen, with all the nations of the old world at war in his veins, he is developing artificially in the direction of sleekness and culture under the restraints of an overwhelming dread of European criticism, and climatically in the direction of the indiginous North American, who is already in possession of his hair, his cheekbones, and the manlier instincts in him, which the sea has rescued from civilization. ”

“ He asks me about the state of the action and the position of my command, and requests me to shorten my front a little toward my left, so as to make room for his division on my right. I gladly promise this, and despatch orders to Schimmelfennig accordingly. Poor Kearney—he had not three days more to live.
Kearney has hardly left me when I hear a tremendous turmoil in the direction of my center—the rebel yell in its most savage form, and one crash of musketry after another. I conclude that the rebels are making another and more furious charge. ”

“ However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began to loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr. Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay.
He was much older than she. His conversation, which was serious, took place at intervals in his great brown beard. After the first year of married life, Mrs. Kearney perceived that such a man would wear better than a romantic person, but she never put her own romantic ideas away. ”

“ Fighting side by side, with the man he had first taken a fancy to on the Levee of New Orleans, and afterwards became instrumental in making captain of his corps—finding this man to be what he had conjecturally believed and pronounced him—of the “true grit”—Cris Rock now felt for Florence Kearney almost the affection of a father, combined with the grand respect which one gallant soul is ever ready to pay another. ”

“ Kearney?’
‘He thinks he’s a Whig, but, except hating the Established Church and having a print of Lord Russell over the fireplace, I don’t know he has other reason for the opinion.’
‘All right; there’s nothing finer for a young man entering public life than to be able to sneer at his father for a noodle. That’s the practical way to show contempt for the wisdom of our ancestors. ”

“ Mr. Holohan pointed desperately towards the hall where the audience was clapping and stamping. He appealed to Mr. Kearney and to Kathleen. But Mr. Kearney continued to stroke his beard and Kathleen looked down, moving the point of her new shoe: it was not her fault. Mrs. Kearney repeated:
"She won't go on without her money."
After a swift struggle of tongues Mr. Holohan hobbled out in haste. The room was silent. When the strain of the silence had become somewhat painful Miss Healy said to the baritone:
"Have you seen Mrs. Pat Campbell this week?" ”

“ When Dick Kearney quitted Kilgobbin Castle for Dublin, he was very far from having any projects in his head, excepting to show his cousin Nina that he could live without her.
‘I believe,’ muttered he to himself, ‘she counts upon me as another “victim.” These coquettish damsels have a theory that the “whole drama of life” is the game of their fascinations and the consequences that come of them, and that we men make it our highest ambition to win them, and subordinate all we do in life to their favour. ”

“ In that old square of Trinity College, Dublin, one side of which fronts the Park, and in chambers on the ground-floor, an oak door bore the names of ‘Kearney and Atlee.’ Kearney was the son of Lord Kilgobbin ”

“ Better the cropper than pass one’s life looking over the top rail and envying the fellow that had cleared it; but what’s this? here’s a letter here: it got in amongst the newspapers. I say, Dick, do you stand this sort of thing?’ said he, as he read the address.
‘Stand what sort of thing?’ asked the other, half angrily.
‘Why, to be addressed in this fashion? The Honourable Richard Kearney, Trinity College, Dublin.’
‘It is from my sister,’ said Kearney, as he took the letter impatiently from his hand ”

“ That was old Miss Betty all the world over!’ and he laughed till his eyes ran over, though the rueful face of young O’Shea was staring at him all the time. ‘Don’t look so gloomy, O’Shea,’ cried Kearney: ‘I have not so good a cook, nor, I’m sorry to say, so good a cellar, as at the Barn; but there are young faces, and young voices, and young laughter, and a light step on the stairs ”