He had been beaten and by the Rileys. Whoever else might realize the project he had been perfecting for years, Mr. Daniel Brady should reap no advantage from it.
About the time when he first began to think of annexing Woodbrook, “going to the salt water for the benefit of sea bathing” was becoming a recognized necessity even amongst those who had never previously thought of permitting their families such an indulgence.
From inland rural districts, as well as from the towns great and small, people came trooping for that “month at the shore,” which it was believed made weakly children strong, and kept healthy children strong and robust.
Each summer Kingslough was crowded by visitors. Poor cottages—no matter how small or poor, provided they were situated close on the bay—were eagerly taken by those to whom economy was an object; and it must have been plain even to a much less intelligent gentleman than Mr. Brady that, if the accommodation in Kingslough and its neighbourhood had been twice as great, willing guests might still be found to avail themselves of it.
So far, however, no one had thought of building houses solely and simply for the benefit of season residents, and it was by a plan of this kind Mr. Brady hoped to make Woodbrook pay.
Part of the property stretched down to the sea. The water at that distance from Kingslough was represented better for bathing than that which washed the grey shore below Ballylough Abbey. The beach was of finer sand, a headland stretched out into the sea sufficiently far to suggest the idea of erecting a quay, at which steamers could anchor at almost all conditions of the tide. The scenery was wilder and more beautiful than that surrounding Kingslough. Already there was a talk of a short sea route being inaugurated not merely between Scotland and Ireland, but between England and Ireland; and Mr. Brady, though he did not erect his castle on the strength of either English or Scotch money, considered it quite on the cards that from the great manufacturing towns in Lancashire, and even from Glasgow, people might come to spend the summer at Glendare.
That was the name he proposed to confer on the new watering-place, not because he was especially fond of the Glendares, but because he considered the title one likely to recommend itself to natives and foreigners alike. He had seen enough of English people to understand the horror which seizes them at sight or sound of a long Irish name, such as Ballinascraw, for instance; on the other hand, he knew the inhabitants of the Green Isle still retained a preference for words indigenous to the soil.
The fashion of wiping out old landmarks, by rechristening romantic spots with prosaic British names, had not then begun, and he would indeed have been considered an adventurous man—adventurous to madness—who founding a settlement on the other side of the Channel, blew the trumpets and assembled the people to hear the town christened Piccadilly, Kensington, or Wandsworth, as is the case at present.
Mr. Brady therefore decided on Glendare, as a name likely to wear well and find favour in the minds of the multitude. Lying idly on his oars, looking with his bodily eyes at the land dotted with trees, sloping so lovingly to the beach,—his mental sight beheld villas filling up the landscape, snug cottages scattered along the shore, a town perhaps climbing up the sides of the headland. The vision grew more real every day. He had drawn his plans, he had decided from which quarry stone should be carted; he had thought how much money he could himself afford as a beginning, how much and at what rate he could raise to complete the scheme; pleasure-boats in imagination he saw drawn up on the shore, small gardens filled with flowers, lawns on which walked ladies gaily dressed,—gentlemen rich enough to pay long rents for convenient, comfortably furnished houses. There was not another property so suitable for the purpose as Woodbrook in all that part of the country; and the beauty of it was that, whilst those few acres by the sea could be so admirably utilized, the domain itself might remain almost intact, the farms still be left as they were, the former tenants still permitted to pay rents to new owners.
And all the while unconscious of the evil-eye coveting his home, his lands, his son’s inheritance, General Riley pursued his way, never imagining beggary was coming to him as fast as the feet of misfortune could bring it.