The Rebels of Ireland (106 page)

“Stephen Smith is certainly interesting,” the earl continued now.

It was also time he married. He was already thirty-five. A few years more, William considered, and the fellow would become so set in his ways that he'd never tolerate anybody. And it was time that Stephen had a home. He'd been living in lodgings for years.

William Mountwalsh had known other men like Stephen Smith. Men who were so fascinated by the daily business of politics, with its excitement, uncertainties, and nighttime confabulations, not to mention the thrill of feeling you were close to influence and power, that they could spend decades in busy backrooms and corridors, and never realize that life had passed them by. Politics, he knew, was a drug, and Stephen was an addict. He needed to be saved.

William had also observed that these cynical political men were often secret idealists. Stephen Smith did not worship O'Connell; he was too intelligent. But he truly believed that O'Connell was guiding the Irish to a better destiny. Like a prophet of old, the Liberator might not lead his people out of the desert, but he had already taken them part of the way. Sometimes men like Stephen also dreamed of becoming leaders themselves. That was hard for a poor man, though not impossible. Did Stephen have such dreams? Perhaps. William had heard him give a speech once or twice, and he was talented. There was an aura about him. But if the young man had dreams of standing for Parliament, those dreams were probably idealistic. He'd like to be a great figure in a great cause, the earl shrewdly guessed, rather than win just for the sake of winning, as a true politician would. The fellow had one other weakness also, the usual weakness of the poor man: he was proud. “Stephen Smith would rather do anything than have it seem he had been bought or sold,” he remarked to the young woman, wondering if she'd understand.

“Does he like women?”

“Yes. When he has time.” He paused. “Women like him.”

“I expect they do. He has wonderful green eyes.”

“Does he? Yes, I suppose he does.”

A number of women had been very taken with Stephen. To William's knowledge, he had had affairs with at least two married society ladies, one of which had lasted some years. Whether Stephen's heart had really been engaged, William doubted. Perhaps Smith was a little selfish. Yet if a man with no money likes to move in those circles, what else can he do but have affairs with other men's wives?

Was it his eyes that attracted them? Partly, no doubt. But there was something magical surrounding those dark good looks of his; a fascinating intensity in his manner when he became enthusiastic, and eloquent upon a subject. That, and his occasional depressions, and their knowledge of his vulnerability, were surely the things that had made those aristocratic ladies want to possess him, and to be possessed.

“I feel sure you'll reach your own conclusions,” he said. “You should talk to him.”

“Have no fear.” She smiled. “I shall.”

Maureen was in a sunny mood when Mr. Callan came by. She wasn't sure, but she thought he probably liked her. Certainly, in the last two years, he'd always been civil to her and asked after the children. Once, riding by, he had noticed two of the children eyeing a large, shiny apple he was about to eat and had handed it to her, with a half-smile, to give to them.

Today, he had just asked if her father was about, and when she said he was out, Callan had just said, “No matter,” and told her he'd pass by later.

The sky was clear that day, and the autumn sun was bright. After so much damp weather all through the summer, the sunny sky made her feel cheerful.

When she considered her life, Maureen felt rather pleased with herself. She knew how much her family needed her. It was two years since her mother had died after giving birth to little Daniel. “Look after him for me,” her mother had said to her. As the eldest daughter, she would have expected to help her mother with the children anyway; and, thank God, she had not been married.

Since then, she had taken over the role of mother. There were four children to take care of. The two eldest had left soon after their mother's death. Norah had married and moved with her husband to England. Then William had taken the chance to go with his uncle when Eamonn's remaining brother had left for America. But that had still left the younger ones: Nuala, who was fifteen now; Mary and Caitlin, eight and ten; and little Daniel, who, because of the circumstances of his birth, she thought of almost as her own. And she supposed that, if her father did not marry again, she'd be looking after him for another dozen years or more, until he was old enough to fend for himself in the world. Unless, of course, she married herself, but that was unlikely. She was twenty-four now. And as her mother had warned her years ago: “I'm afraid, Maureen, you're very plain. Though perhaps,” she had added, “someone will marry you for your goodness.”

She didn't think she was good, but she did try to keep cheerful. No matter how she felt, she tried to be calm at all times and show the little ones a smiling face. It seemed the right thing to do.

And thank God her father was always so strong. She knew it could not have been easy for him without a wife. But he was always even-tempered, and affectionate with the children, and it was clear even to the younger ones that he lived his life according to strong beliefs and principles. He always took the family to Mass. He drank a little ale, but seldom any liquour, and never poteen. She could not imagine him drunk. Both old Father Casey and his successor always told her: “Your father is everything a good Catholic should be.”

After his brother and William went, he was the only one of the Maddens left on his father's land. Callan had not taken any action
against the tenants who had voted for O'Connell back in '28, and his relationship with her father had been one of guarded politeness ever since. Was Callan even a little afraid of them? There had been some trouble below Ennis last year, some small rioting and looting after a local food shortage, though it hadn't come up here. The Protestant gentry and their agents had all been a bit jumpy, though, while O'Connell's campaign of monster meetings was going on. But he must surely know, she thought, that whatever he might have done in his youth, her father was the most peaceable man in the area. Callan had not been entirely inactive, anyway. As the opportunity arose, he had quietly rationalized the tenancies. A few years ago, the rest of the former Madden holdings had been united again, converted back to cereal crops, and leased to a farmer in the next parish.

But Eamonn Madden always remembered who he was. He'd managed to find money for Norah when she married, so that her husband should be satisfied. He'd had to borrow from a draper in Ennis to pay for William's passage to America, but he'd paid more than half of that back already. As soon as that debt was taken care of, he'd be saving for Nuala's wedding; you could be sure of that. He wouldn't have the family disgraced.

He continued to reverence Daniel O'Connell—little Daniel was named after the great man. He also became an admirer of the Under Secretary Drummond. “That's a good man,” he would declare. And he would often quote that statesman's dictum: “Property has rights, but also responsibilities.” If he ever heard of a bad action by a landlord, he would sigh and repeat it.

Her father returned early that afternoon. Callan came by about an hour later.

The news he brought was very simple.

“I've had an offer for this land. A higher rent. I came to see if you cared to match it.”

“Higher? How much higher?”

“Nearly double what you're paying now. Mind you, I should have raised your rent before, but…”

“Double?” Eamonn was dumbfounded. “Impossible. How could anyone afford it?”

“It's the farmer who has the rest of the land here. He won't be living on it, you see. He'll pull down the cottage and turn all the land over to cereals. He'll make a small profit, or he wouldn't have made the offer.”

“But this is our land. The Maddens have always lived here.”

“Make me an offer.” Callan seemed very calm. “But you'll have to come close.” Was this a long-delayed revenge for the Clare election? Possibly. But more likely it was just business.

“Property has rights, Mr. Callan,” said Eamonn. He indicated his family. “But it also has responsibilities.”

“Drummond's dead.”

“I'll be needing a little time to think.”

“You can have a week,” said Callan calmly, and rode away.

For three days, they went over it from every angle, she and her father. Could they find another tenancy? There were none, for they soon discovered the rent Callan was being offered was being asked by other landlords elsewhere. What if she went out to work, if work could be found? Or what if she ran the holding, and he went to England and sent money home? This she was much against. “The children need their father,” she told him. Nothing seemed to make sense. But Eamonn could not bring himself to accept it. The thought of losing his land was more than he could bear. On the fourth day, she took matters into her own hands and took their little cart down into Ennis.

They were going to be very happy there. That was what she told the children. And indeed, she had done well.

The long, three-room cottage was one of the better of some six hundred such dwellings in and around Ennis, and by the time the children came there, she had it spotlessly clean. The mud walls were thick and dry, the thatch was good. And she had persuaded the
landlord to accept a rent for the cottage of only forty shillings a year. With the livestock all sold for good prices, Eamonn's debt was paid off and there was even some cash on hand. The cash came in handy, also, because when they wanted to rent some conacre ground—mock ground, they called it locally—to raise a potato crop to feed themselves, they found they had to pay cash in advance.

“I never heard of paying in advance before,” Eamonn had grumbled; but that was what the agent could get that year.

And now all he had to do was to find work.

In the months that followed, they all came to know the town of Ennis well. The children quite enjoyed being there. The town might be dirty and unkempt, but it was always busy. The little square by the central courthouse was usually full of stalls or hucksters selling all kinds of things. And although nobody ever seemed to want to tidy the place up, improvements were nonetheless visible. A number of public buildings had been added in the last decade. Some of these were rather cheerless, like the new fever hospital. More forbidding, just north of the town, was the dour workhouse for the indigent, which you might have mistaken for a military barracks or a jail. But a rather smart new stone bridge, to celebrate the accession of young Queen Victoria, had improved the route out of the town on one side; and the year they arrived in the town, the whole community, Catholic and Protestant alike, had come to watch the dedication of what, one day, would be a handsome Catholic cathedral to serve the whole area, on a broad site near the newspaper offices.

Other parts of the town were to be avoided. Just across the street began the warren of alleys that led down to the River Fergus. She had to be very firm with Mary and Caitlin that they must not go down there, for although she had never heard of children coming to any harm, the town's motley collection of prostitutes hung about in the doorways, and there were beggars who, if drunk or angry, had been known to threaten people with shillelaghs. And, of course, there were the meanest of the cabins along the road where they lived themselves, and where the children were in rags. “You must leave them alone,”
she told the children. What else could she say? There were plenty of streets, dingy but respectable, where they could wander. Or there were the open fields outside the town where they could play.

And it was important that they were known to be respectable. There were about forty families with houses in the surrounding countryside who might be considered local gentry. Most were Protestant, of course, though a few were Catholic. Close to them were the more important merchants with solid houses in the town, the handful of professional men and some others, like Mr. Knox, the owner of the
Clare Journal
, who were entitled to consideration. When she and her father accompanied Nuala to some of these houses when she went to find work as a servant, she was glad to overhear one of the gentlemen tell his wife: “The Maddens? Respectable farming family. Take her on by all means.” Nuala found work with a merchant in a very decent house near the offices of the
Clare Journal
, so that she was not even a mile away from her family.