Libertas, or Through Dreamland to Truth

Front matter

LIBERTAS LI BERTAS OR THROUGH DREAMLAND TO TRUTH BY WALTER SWEETMAN, B.A. 'UNITAS LIBERTAS CARITAS ' IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. | . n i) o n EDEN, REMINGTON & CO., PUBLISHERS KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 189I VOL. I. THROUGH THE NIGHT % a; sit ' J esp.re mourir en religieux p.nitent et en liberal impenitent. ' — LacOKPAIRE. CONTENTS CHAP. r-AGE INTRODUCTION, ix I. CASTLETOWN HOUSE, .... 1 II. INTRODUCTORY, 15 III. THE WAGER, 23 IV. 'WARRIOR,' 37 V. OVER THEIR PIPES, 50 VI. THE OTHER SIDE, 57 VII. THE MISSION, 81 VIII. BY THE RIVEK, 97 IX. RETROSPECTIVE, 135 X. THE ABBEY, . . . . . .142 XI. SIR HUGH, 156 XII. SUMMER HOURS, 177 XIII. OF A SPIDER, 198 XIV. NOTICE TO QUIT, 2IO XV. THE LAST DAY AT THE CASTLE, . . 223 XVI. ANNIE, 234 XVII. CAN IT BE ? 245 XVIII. SUGGESTIVE, 255 XIX. A SHADOW ON THE WALL, . . . 266 XX. FRIENDS AGAIN, 278 XXI. FOUGHT OUT, 284 APPENDIX,

Introduction

The following pages contain many parts of a work which the writer has been for years preparing against his death, and although in their present form some long prefaces and notes have been omitted, it is hoped that they still include the sketch of a philosophy which courts the strictest ex amination. It owes its origin to a great principle and to a plain fact. The principle is that when it is once proved, as far as may be, and granted, that the Supreme Being, in His infinite self-sacrifice, lived for some thirty years on earth to teach men, it would seem to follow, from the very nature of things, that He must have left an infallible guardian of His teaching to preserve it unimpaired to the end of time, and that it would be hard, indeed, to see where that guardian can be found if not in the Roman Catholic Church.

Un fortunately for the world the fact has to be added, that this Church, or rather the thinkers in it, do not appear to have, hitherto, worked out the necessary consequences of their own Divinely-inspired dogmas into an entirely sound philosophy. This is manifest from the single fact that our prayer-books are allowed to tell us that we ought to thank God for being so much more good to us than to others far more deserving,* quite forgetting apparently that the others far more deserving can scarcely thank Him for it also. Surely this is not the philosophy with which the true * It is plain too, that the ordinary Christian teaching about the animal world is simply atheistic, as it is plain that God being at once infinitely just and infinitely powerful can not possibly allow a single case of undeserved and unrequited suffering to exist throughout creation.

INTRODUCTION.

X religion should meet our age ; and its shortcomings might well excuse the thinking of even more than a single life being given to the substitution of a better. The sketch of one such (the writer dares not state here what he really thinks of it) will, it is confidently hoped, be found in the following pages. It rests mainly upon the two ideas, that God has created the human mind, as a whole, and speaking broadly, with a true sense of right whereby to recognise His perfections,* and that He is, Himself, Infinite Perfection ; and it is suggested that it is by the light of these two ideas that we are to read and understand the first great command ment of the Christian law, which tells us that we are to love the Lord our God with our whole hearts and our whole minds. How could the Arian have so loved Him when he believed that it was some other being, and not God Himself, that redeemed him from sin ; how far less the Calvinist, if he accepts and realises his apparent dogma, that God, of His free will, creates innumerable human wretches with no choice but to be consigned to eternal miser}- ? *A "ithout these two ideas it is suggested again that Theism can have no philosophy worth)- ofthe name, and that, on the other hand, no reasonable man can examine the explanations, put forward by the different schools of thought, ofthe great and undeni able fact that he is alive and thinking, without coming to the conclusion that it is probable that he has been created by Superhuman Intelligence.

The system that would seem necessarily to result from these two ideas may be, perhaps, correctly described as ' Em piricism,' at once partly founded on and enlightened by Christianity, and the object of the whole work may be taken to be to prove that, while faith is essentially a supernatural gift of God, the Balance of rational probability directs all to be Catholics. Any strength it may have, and its author, at least, believes it to be more than a match for all possible opponents, is derived, on the face of things, from reflection and not from books. Indeed, from the mere consideration * Mr Mill's argument would seem to be unanswerable that if Divine justice, for instance, is not the same in kind as human justice, Divine truthfulness may not be the same in kind as human truthfulness which would ruin the whole rational basis of Christianity.

INTRODUCTION.

XI of Christian mysteries, the writer had become, to some extent, at least, an ' Empiricist ' before he knew that the great philosophy, to which the name of 'Empiricism ' has been given, existed. And here he will be bold enough to state his conviction that future generations will rank it among the conspicuous mercies of God, that natural principles, which are such admirable hand-maids to Christian Dogma, should have commended themselves to minds whom no one can accuse of being biassed in its favour, and his own utter inability to understand how any philosopher can hold both that the child, whose eternal state is foreknow-n with absolute certainty, can still be absolutely free to choose that state, and that the human intellect can always implicitly trust its own strong instincts. Even more insuperable, if possible, would seem to be the difficulty of making some metaphysical as opposed to moral teachings of ' Intuitionalism ' harmonise with the doctrine ofthe Trinity, and yet it would appear to be absurd to hold that Infinite Wisdom came on earth to teach us but that nevertheless we must cling exclusively to a philosophy of which the leading principles are entirely inconsistent with a truth at the very foundation of His teaching.

So clear was this to the Fathers of the first twelve centuries that St Bernard spoke of respect for Aristotle as an insult to the Catholic faith, and Innocent III forbade the French people to read his works.* It was only when he was absolutely driving Christianity from the schools, that St Thomas made a peace with him ; and it is hard to think but that if that saint had known that the opinion was held by some of the ablest secular philosophers that our whole sense of natural external certainty, so to speak, comes from our experience of life, and cannot therefore be legiti mately allowed to transcend it, he would have gladly wel comed so potent an ally for his efforts to show the accordance between human reason and the teaching of Christ. That accordance is from the nature of truth perfect, but it may be again suggested that it cannot be shown to be perfect, unless Christian thinkers will accept the necessary con sequences of making the proofs of Christian Revelation apart * See Dublin Review, April 1891, page 261.

INTRODUCTION.

XII of their systems, and thus cease from their painful efforts to prove as philosophers the existence of a Perfect Creator merely from the phenomena of our poor natural world, when they know as theologians that many of those phenomena are due to the sin of man. And yet what could seem to our human reasons to be more natural than that when our Creator deigned to come on earth Himself to tell us why we are, He should have made the full answer to that question unattainable except through his own words; and the wonders of His goodness and self-sacrifice being once granted, as well as the immutability of His laws, what can again be more natural than to hold that human miseries have been permitted and redeemed by God in order to give to man the possibility of becoming far nobler and more worthy of love than any angel by having to contend against far greater weakness, and that the absolute perfection of the infinite design has been shown to those poor minds of ours which after all have been made to His own likeness, by the fact that we have been per mitted to know in our days that one human being did indeed so perfectly correspond with divine grace as during a long life to be free from all sin.

Perhaps if the good missionaries who have striven so hard to convert Buddhist monks to the highest and infinitely most beautiful truth of all, the love of God, had but taken pains to show that our Creator wishes us to know that He is all perfection in its essence, they would have been far more successful in their efforts, as they would not have been met by a philosophy of Law which, gloomy and incomplete as it is, may seem to human reason to be far less full of weakness than their own. As the arguments in favour of these views are only sketched in the following pages, and for the most part in the short notes, it is hoped that they will in no way interfere with the interest of the different tales and poems, as mere works of imagination. Indeed it is evident that the first volume must stand or fall by its merits as a story, and it is intended that the others also shall try, for those who prefer it, simply to please. It only remains to state that every argumentative word in

INTRODUCTION.

XIII the work is believed to be written in full obedience to that Liberality which may be defined as the generous justice that would give their due to all things from men to arguments, and to submit that if it be objected that such a spirit may create for Roman Catholics difficulties where perhaps through ignorance none before existed, it may be most truly answered that such difficulties should tend to foster that charitable respect for the consciences of others, the want of which will probably be admitted to be the very greatest blot on the characters of good Christians in the past, while it is the writer's conviction that it will be found upon examination, that these difficulties are only just sufficient to prove the truth of the Christian theory by making faith a virtue and not a mere conclusion, and the soundness of liberal prin ciples by showing religious toleration to be a duty. — .$_._-'<—

Chapter I Castletown House

He was a foreigner — evidently a foreigner — a young man, dark-eyed and black-bearded, whom many of the people along the road turned round to stare after as he passed ; he had left his knapsack at the inn in the town behind him, and was now striding on free and unencumbered, taking a traveller's first view of a strange country. A very dreary country it was. For two miles his road had lain through wet, flat bottoms, where sickly rushes and sicklier furze seemed to be the only natural products of the soil, while every here and there a few fields feebly ploughed for the winter afforded the principal signs of the industry of man. ' By no means a land to fight for,' thought the stranger to himself, as a slight rise in the road gave him a chance of looking back over it; ' and yet they say the castle demesne is very fine.

Nothing is droller in this droll country than VOL. I A the sudden changes from a desert to a palace; but surely these great black banks look as if I had seen them in a dream.' ft must have been an unpleasant dream then, for it was a gloomy prospect enough that now opened on the traveller. Great black banks, as he called them, sprang up sudJenly on both sides of the road, lining it as far as the eye could reach, and seeming to go off from it at right angles into indefinite space. Black banks that towered above moat-like ditches where the leaf-fall of the stunted trees above might have rotted undisturbed for a century. On each side of him were soon large square fields, divided from each other by similar banks, fortified every here and there with heavy gate-piers of mason-work — large square fields of moss and rushes, as pretentious as they were desolate and barren. 1 May I ask who lives in this place ? ' said the stranger, with the slightest possible foreign accent, to a young man who turned up just then from a dark lane on one side. ' There is nobody living there at all, sir.' ' Ah ! nobody ; and to whom may it belong, pray ? ' ' One Mrs Brown is the landlady; my father is car ing the house for her, sir ; but I believe there are great debts on the estate entirely.

What time of day are you now, sir ? ' ' Half-past one. You seem to have more land here than you know what to do with ; would not one of these fields, well tilled, do more for you than ten left in this way to the rabbits ? ' ' You may say that, sir.' ' Then why do you leave them so ? ' ' Well, sir, you see the place is in the Courts.' ' Ah ! in the Courts ; I must take a note of that — then when I see any land in Ireland neglected, I may know that it is in the Courts.' 'I'm not so sure of that either, sir,' said the young countryman, smiling, but looking keenly enough at the stranger too; but just then a turn in the road brought them both in front of what must have been once an imposing entrance, where heavy old iron gates still hung between piers of granite. The wicket at one side was half open ; and at this, wishing the stranger good-morning, the young countryman stopped. 'I think you told me your father is caring the house ? ' said the other, stopping too. ' I am a stranger, looking at the country ; perhaps you'd have no objection to my seeing it.

It seems a curious old place altogether.' 'Not the smallest in life, I'll be bound ; and the old woman will tell you some odd stories about it too. Come in, sir, and welcome;' and with the natural politeness of an Irishman, the young man held the gate open for the other to enter. A curious old place it was indeed — as curious as any old place is sure to be, upon which, in its prime, neglect has fallen sudden and entire. The path from the gate lay along the centre of a wide grass-grown avenue, which must have wound gracefully enough in other days into what was no doubt a young and thriving plantation. A few remnants of the paling that had protected it were still to be seen, but it was nothing now but a dank and tangled mass of briars and stunted poles. On reaching the other side, they passed under the great arms of some gigantic ash, whose honest age, all dying as they were, showed quite pleasantly in comparison.

And then, as the path swept round a clump of overgrown evergreens, for the first time, straight in front of them, the stranger saw the house. It was a disappointment. There was nothing venerable about it, nothing grand, nothing picturesque ; it was simply a second-class mansion, in ruin. In every window the shutters were shut, and the glass was broken. The plaster had fallen in great masses from the walls. Through one corner of the hall door a rat had eaten its way. I can fancy a man getting sad when he saw it first, with a vague sense of people having been happy there once. I think the stranger's eye did wander down a piece of level turf, that stole away at one side among the ever greens, with something of the air of a lady's pleasure ground ; and I think he took some trouble to keep his back to his companion as he did so.

They passed round the house then, and into a large paved yard, where extensive stabling, half unroofed, sheltered nothing now but a few fowl, that wandered through the old buildings desolately enough — then down a short flight of granite steps, and into the basement story by the old kitchen door. ' Here's a gentleman come so see the house, mother,' said Kavanagh — for that was the young countryman's name ; ' he's from foreign parts, I believe. I beg your pardon, sir, if I am wrong.' ' Not wrong, but a little uncomplimentary,' said the traveller with a smile ; ' I was beginning to fancy my English above detection. I hope I don't disturb you, madam ? ' 'Not at all, sir — not at all,' said a small neat bright-eyed little woman, dusting a chair with her apron as she spoke ; ' won't you take a seat near the fire, sir ?

Patsy, put on some of the wood, avick ! — the gentleman must be cold after his walk. Dear, dear, there's not much to see in the old house now ; and yet I remember the time when the height of the quality would be coming to us, and glad enough they'd be to be in it too. Take a seat, sir, do.' ' Oh, thank you ; I am not in the least cold.' ' Come, mother,' said her son, ' show the gentleman tbe house at once. I'll mind the pot until father comes in. Maybe he'll not be proud, but just take a share of a hot potato with us when you are done.' 'Why, then, it's the best way, sure enough,' she replied, ' and we can begin here at once. This is the kitchen we're in, sir, and a nasty smoking chimney it always had, bad luck to it. You can see the weights of the old jack round the walls, that look as if they were intended for nothing under a whole Kerry any way.

These were the men-ser vants' rooms here, sir ; it's not much they cared where they put the likes of them in those days. I'm told the grand English footmen up at the Castle would just faint if they were shown such a place as that to sleep in. God be with the old times, when the boys minded little where they slept, providing they could trate a friend of their own in the servants' hall, and that nobody had a right to be ashamed of the family ! ' Mind your head here, going up these narrow stairs, sir. Many's the tray of things was broken coming down them. The poor Mistress — God pitc her ! — always said they were a shame and a scandal; but nobody minded what she said, for she was a stranger herself, and thought that there was nothing good enough for her in the country. This was the hall ; wait till I open the window ; — now your honour can see what it is like.

Ay, to be sure ! that's the grand stairs — wet enough they are now ! Many a time I've seen the old housemaid cry her eyes out, when they dirted them on her, after she had every stone as white as a sheet of paper. Poor thing ! she could not make up her mind to lave the old house when the family went. She had been in it, girl and woman, for sixty years and odd; and my old man let her sit by the fire below till she died. The Mistress sent her a few pounds once from over the sea ; and at all events she had more than enough to bury her, but ah, sir, it's an awful thing for the poor, when a family goes as ours did ! ' ' And why didn't they sell the place ? ' said the stranger. 'Then that's what I can't say, sir. Maybe they couldn't. Sure the Mistress was half crazed any way with grief and worry.

You'll find all the furniture rotting in the rooms; she never would let anything be stirred. I wouldn't have liked an auction myself; but sure it's awful to see the things wasting as they are — awful. They used to call this the '' chiny-room," sir, though there never was any great chiny in it after all. And this is the drawing room — the driest room on this floor; but fine divar sion the moths and mice have in it to make up for that. The sofas are all in flakes like, as you'll see when I open the window.' So they were indeed. I have often thought of what an odd thing it would be to dig one's own way into an uncleared house at Pompeii. Perhaps the stranger experienced some sensation of the kind as he passed through that old room. On all sides of him were the paraphernalia of civilisation fossilised in dust.

You might fancy the tall, old-fashioned mirrors to be murkyshrouds hanging on the walls. Over a spider table in one corner was what appeared to be a carefully-built dome of cobwebs; it was really a glass case full of stuffed birds. He rubbed away the dust from the top, and could see them inside plainly enough. The old music-books were still beside the piano; he opened it, and was about to pass his fingers over the discoloured keys, when some sudden feeling seemed to prevent him, and he shut it down again, covering himself with dry filth as he did so. It was the same all over the house, except that everywhere else the plaster was falling from the ceilings, and the boards mouldering with damp. One corner had rotted out of a press that was built into the wall in an upper story, and through the hole he could see the house linen, that had never been removed.

Their faded draperies still clung to the four posts of the dismal beds. If there are such things as ghosts, he felt that it was there they should sleep. ' May I ask you, madam,' he said, turning his eyes full on the woman as he spoke, ' do you ever hear or see anything peculiar in this house ? ' ' No, indeed, then, God be praised ! ' she said, crossing herself devoutly. ' My old man is always with me at night, and it's my opinion that nothing very bad can come where he is. I never slept but once in the place without him, and then I dreamt such a dream that I wouldn't do it again — not if I was to get a hundred pounds for it.' ' You were frightened, I suppose, waking up after it all by yourself? ' ' You may well say that, sir. I didn't bring you into the room yet, but when I do, I'll tell you my dream.' ' Oh, then, there is the room !

I was thinking there must be ; but you have not told me yet the name of the place, or who lived here.' ' This is Castletown House, sir, and the Master's name was John Marcus Brown. There is no older name in the county, as I've heard; and the day he brought home his young wife from England — she had always been in England, but was a foreigner all the same, the last of her family, I believe — there wasn't a prouder man between this and Dublin, or a handsomer.' 1 And she ? ' ' Was the grandest-looking woman you could see. The people didn't take much to her, she was so stately like; and it killed them entirely not seeing the Mistress going out of Castletown to the chapel on a Sunday. The family had been always Catholics, you see, sir; but she was a good woman when you did not offend her, and a good wife, for all that.

It would have been well for the Master if he had let himself be " led and said " by her.' ' Was she fond of him, do you think ? ' said the stranger, rubbing the dust off an old print as he spoke. ' Fond of him ! She doated down on the very ground he walked on. And why not ? I never knew a good woman yet but was fond of any sort of a husband. And the Master was about the finest man, and the most off-hand man, and the heartiest man in the three kingdoms. It was an evil day for us all that Sir Hugh first crossed his path.' ' Had they any children ? ' ' One little son, who ought to be my master now. God bless him ! ' ' I suppose his mother was too full of his father to think much of him,' said the stranger, and there was the slightest possible huskiness in his voice as he spoke. ' Why, then, may God forgive you, sir, begging your pardon for the word, for saying such a thing as that !

It's little you know about it, if that's what you think. Many and many a time I've seen her — I was his nurse, sir — down on her knees by the side of his cradle kissing the toes that the little crayture would hold up to her, and he crowin' in her face all the time. Too fond of the father to care about the child ! Oh, no, sir ; that's not the way with us at all. Sure, hasn't she paid me and my old man our five shillings a week regular ever since — though, by all accounts, she often wanted it bad enough herself — just because I was his nurse, as I told you, and for no other reason in life; for we never were allowed to do anything good or bad to the house. Himself takes grass and keeps cattle.' The stranger had been standing looking out, or pretending to look out, of an upper window. ' Show me the room you dreamed of,' he said suddenly. ' We must go down the stairs again, then, sir, for it's the dining-room, and it opens off the hall.' ' What is its story ? ' 'Just as black a one, sir, as ever you heard, wherever you have been.

I told you that it was an evil day for the Master that he first became thick with Sir Hugh — and well I might say that same. They were the nearest neighbours, you see, sir, but the Baronet wasn't married, or isn't married, for that matter, to this day ; and it's he that was up to all sorts of wickedness — God forgive him ! Sure there never was a man had such a name in the country for divilment ! and he looking as smooth as silk all the time. He and the Master — God rest his soul ! — were the leading gentry for many a mile around, any way. Many a time I've heard the poor Mistress say that himself was breaking us all trying to buy horses to ride against the Baronet. I think you see, sir, that she thought the Master was a richer man than he was when she married him ; but it was all well enough until they took to playing cards together.

Sure any body that knew the two would know that Sir Hugh, young as he was, could walk round the Master at the likes of that. It was then that the poor Mistress became broken-hearted entirely. I think she must have had a sort of a feeling of what was going" to happen, for she used to hate the very ground Sir Hugh walked on. Many a time I used to catch her then on her knees by the cradle, and the baby's little things would be all wet when I'd take him up ; and when you'd look at the Mistress's eyes, you'd know well enough where the wet came from. Many a talk she and the Master used to have about it, too ; but he was a wilful man in his own way, and she got no good of him. ' That's the room now, sir. You see the old tables are in it still. You'll find a dark stain on the floor over there. It was red enough when I saw it in my dream.

Well, sir, it's over twenty years ago now since the old butler was woke up by the dining room bell as he was sitting fast asleep by the kitchen fire — just where my old man sits in the evenings now. You see he couldn't go to bed, for the Baronet was dining with the Master, and they were both playing cards in this room. Well, sir, when he went upstairs, he found the two gentlemen standing upon the rug, and the Master's face was like a flame of fire. " Load those pistols, John," he said, "and see you do it carefully." The Master used to be always firing those times at a mark, you see, sir, and John — that was the butler's name — knew all about the powder and things well; and yet his hand was shakin' so, he told us afterwards, that he could hardly get to do it at all that night. '"Now, sir," said the Master, when John had finished at last, to the Baronet, who was standing, as I said, at the other side of the fireplace, "Now, sir, take your choice." ' " I'm really very sorry it should come to this, Brown," said the other. '"Must I call you 'coward,' man, as well as cheat ?