The “boys” are bent on drawing Thady into their schemes of revenge, likely to prove murderous, upon two of his special abominations, not only Ussher but the builder, Flannelly’s man of business, Keegan, who aimed at himself possessing Ballycloran. With a sigh of relief, the reader finds Thady resist the “boys’” overtures, and, for the time, hopes he may yet be kept from the crowning crime which destiny had seemed to reserve for him. One of Ussher’s most recent captures goes by the name of Tim. This, on a much earlier page, has caused an ejected cottager to anticipate the policeman’s end with the words: “I’d sooner be in Tim’s shoes this night than in Captain Ussher’s, fine gentleman as he thinks hisself.” So far, however, Thady holds aloof from any projects of retribution, likely to involve bloodshed, against the men whose names had become bywords throughout the countryside. Nevertheless, we are still made to feel that, superhuman agencies, in the shape of foreordained circumstances, will draw Thady’s neck into the hangman’s noose.
What did Trollope, after careful inquiry, find the spy system, in its social and moral consequences, to be? At the outset he admits that paid informers frequently bring to justice criminals who would otherwise slip through the meshes of the legal net. On the other hand, the system involves not only the degradation of all concerned with it, but very often the grossest miscarriages of justice. Chief among the villainies of Irish espionage is the premium placed upon false informations by the prospect of blood-money. Next to that evil comes the deliberate manufacture of offences by those who have a money interest in fabricating baseless charges against the innocent and unwary. Trollope does not charge the Government with encouraging these informers, or even recognising them. All he says is that those charged with the execution of criminal laws do frequently secure their own advancement by the most iniquitous and demoralising methods.[7]
The resistance offered by Thady Macdermot to the schemes of ruffians who would stick at nothing fills many powerful pages in Trollope’s first story. The young master of Ballycloran is preoccupied with the issues of his sister’s fate, and maddened with the insinuations to which Ussher’s visits gave the point. Ussher himself will die a violent death, but as regards who is to deal the avenging blow the reader is kept in the sustained agony of a trying and artistically prolonged suspense. Some of those seized by Ussher for systematic evasion of the Excise duties protest their innocence while, bound together in twos and threes with cords, they are being huddled off to prison. To one of these Ussher exclaimed: “You mean to threaten me, you ruffian.” “I doesn’t threaten you”, was the answer, “but there is them as does; and it will be a black night’s work to you for what you are doing with the boys, for trying to make out the rint with the whisky, not for themselves but for them as is your friends.” Thus dramatically is set forth the Irish question, as it seemed to Trollope when he first knew the country. At the same time, the followers of his narrative, their interest in the characters now fairly roused, experience a sense of relief at discovering that they may think that Thady at least will be no party in doing the execrated policeman, or anyone else, to death.
The atmosphere at this point is so heavily charged with moral issues as to be depressing almost beyond tolerance. After the example set in such cases by Shakespeare, and indeed in a way Shakespeare might have approved, Trollope at once relieves the situation and at the same time, by the force of contrast, deepens its tragedy with humorous interludes more illustrative of Irish character than descriptions that should run to many pages. The peasants, whose inability to pay high rent for miserably bad land, and who, in Trollope’s words, have had recourse to illegal means for easing them of their difficulties, may have been driven to become “ribbon men,” but, even when separated from ruin by less than a step, throw themselves heart and soul into the noisy hilarities of a wake or a wedding. The description of Pat Brady’s marriage-feast, followed by the improvised cottage ball, might be the letterpress written up to some painting from the brush of an Irish Morland. Even the moody young master of Ballycloran, who is among the guests, in spite of his scowling glances and his inaudible imprecations on the policeman, has caught the contagious gaiety of the occasion. Ussher, also of the company, leads out Feemy as his partner. The prevailing merriment cannot indeed dispel the haunting thought that it may prove to be a dance of death. But the party itself ends, as it began, in whisky and in peace. Thady indeed, having taken more whisky than is his wont, exchanges hot words with Ussher afterwards. But the popular voice hints only, if at all, at what is to come in Brady’s whisper to Joe Reynolds: “It’s little Mr. Thady loves the Captain, and it’s little he ever will.”
This small melodramatic touch is followed by pen-and-ink pictures of society and sport, again driving the figure of a skeleton at the feast into the distant background. Carrick is to have some races, and afterwards a race ball. The night before, there is a dinner; one of the chief figures at this is a gentleman jockey, Bob Gayner, whose life is spent in riding steeplechases, and consequently in reducing his weight to the lowest possible figure. At this particular banquet he has not swallowed a mouthful. Our last sight of him is, when the diners disperse, standing against the fire-place sucking a lemon, with a large overcoat on, and a huge choker round his neck.
Quick, however, on the heels of all this festivity comes the warning that mischief more serious than ever is in the wind. The parish priest in The Macdermots, Father John, never proselytises, never intrigues, and only exacts from his flock alms enough to keep body and soul together. His device, however, to keep Feemy out of danger by moving her from Ballycloran to the care of Mrs. McKeon, together with her husband touched off in one of Trollope’s happiest character miniatures, has failed. The lover who, on one plea after another, had evaded Feemy’s repeated request of marriage, thinks now of nothing less than of making her his wife, but, being content to retain her as a possession, has no objection to punish Thady Macdermot for his unmannerly speech by carrying off his sister. How that design fails of execution, and how Feemy is not abducted, but Ussher, at the instant of lifting her into the carriage, is felled to the ground a corpse by Thady’s smashing bludgeon, forms a scene comparable, for blood-curdling force of description, with Nancy’s murder by Bill Sykes, and did indeed win from Charles Dickens his earliest admission that Trollope had strength as well as glibness. The long-drawn-out strain on her whole being of the events thus summarised has caused Feemy’s days to be numbered. She dies suddenly while waiting to give evidence at her brother’s trial. All that remains now is the execution of the death-sentence on Thady. The last words that he hears before the bolt is drawn are those of Father John’s prayer that God will receive him into His mercy.
The scenes of violence and desolation on which the curtain falls may almost be compared for impressiveness with any picture of the collective ruin wrought by Nemesis in Greek drama, or as the close of Hamlet itself. Yet the gloom which darkens the whole narrative derives at once, for the moment, relief from lighter interludes. Bob Gayner in The Macdermots prepares the way for Dot Blake in The Kellys and the O’Kellys. One chapter also in Trollope’s first novel so overflows with comedy passing into farce as appropriately to presage the rich and varied humour that is on the whole the dominant note of his second effort. Among the magistrates whom Thady Macdermot’s crime have called in solemn conclave together, are two, Jonas Brown of Brown Hall and Mr. Webb of Ardrum. In all respects but social or official status, these two form a complete contrast. The ungenial and unpopular Brown, one of Ussher’s most habitual hosts, has from the first angrily maintained the absence of any extenuating feature in the murder committed by Thady Macdermot. Webb, on the other hand, naturally amiable and beloved throughout his neighbourhood, almost goes so far as to deny Thady’s moral criminality. In the attempt to rescue something of his sister’s honour he merely committed justifiable homicide. His remarks on Thady’s opponents had been so severe as to be taken for personal insults by the Brown faction. The master of Brown Hall therefore demands from Webb a written assurance that his words were pointed at no member of the Brown family, but receives an answer regretting that he cannot comply with such a request. This, it must be remembered, was in the days before the duel had become obsolete.
Brown’s two sons, Fred and George, have from the first been spoiling for a fight. “The sod’s the only place now, father,” each exultingly exclaims, adding: “I like him the better for not recanting.” Fred takes a more serious view, remarks that Webb is a cursed good shot, suggests his father should make his will before he goes out. It would also be as well, in case of accidents, to have a doctor handy, for, as one of the sons thoughtfully remarks: “Though so vital a part as the head be not touched, the body is all over tender bits,” devoutly adding, in words that really have a touch of Dogberry or Shakespearean clown about them: “May heaven always keep lead out of my bowels; I’d sooner have it in my brains.” The father has fidgeted a good deal between these two fires of filial thoughtfulness and counsel, but so far has said nothing. At the last remark, his patience deserts him, and he exclaims: “D—— your brains! I don’t believe you’ve got any,” presently adding that the affair is one of which he has had some experience, while as yet neither of the young men has been out. The preliminaries of the duel may be comedy; the combat itself rises to farce. The Macdermots contains, as will have been seen, touches of more polished humour than this, though in most cases it is broad enough to suggest Anthony Trollope’s inheritance of the gift from his clever mother.
Such passages as that last dwelt upon in The Macdermots prepared, as had been suggested, the way for the transition to the next novel, The Kellys and the O’Kellys. That story, indeed, is not without some incidents only less sombre than those which diffuse their colour through the earlier book. It is characteristic of Trollope’s novels that the underplot is often of as much importance, and the source of as sustained an interest, as the main plot itself. In The Kellys and the O’Kellys, the secondary narrative not only keeps pace with the primary, but reflects the general character of its interest and displays a parallel for some of its occurrences. The period, a little later than the time chosen for The Macdermots, is that of O’Connell’s agitation, trial, and unimpaired ascendency. Among those brought to Dublin by the Liberator’s appearance before his judges are two men. One is the head of the O’Kelly, as of the Kelly clans, now Lord Ballindine; the other is a young man of about his own age, a widow trader’s son, Martin Kelly, whom the nobleman contemptuously acknowledges as a sort of fifteenth cousin. This group is completed by the evil genius of the story, Dot Blake. Both the peer and the peasant happen just now to be united by a similarity of object, more closely binding them for the moment than the tie of remote kinship. Fond of the turf, with one or two horses in training for the English “classical” races, Viscount Ballindine is bent on improving his finances by sharing his title with an heiress, Fanny Wyndham; her guardian, the Earl of Cashel, having other views for her, is actively concerned to prevent communications between his ward and her lover.
Now for Martin Kelly. Simeon Lynch, the Ballindine estate manager, under the present Viscount’s father, has feathered his nest so well as to have amassed a fortune that has raised his children far above the social level of their birth. His son, Barry Lynch, has even been at Eton with young Lord Ballindine; though in Barry’s case the “learning of the humanities have not softened manners or prevented them from being fierce.” His daughter Anastasia, known as Anty, divides the paternal property with her brother. She is therefore a very considerable catch. Nevertheless the plebeian Martin Kelly, with his Irish self-confidence, has set his heart on winning her. That project is resisted as strongly, by Anty’s brother, as Fanny Wyndham’s guardian objects to his ward’s union with Ballindine. Lord Cashel does what he considers his duty to the young lady in his charge shrewdly and, so far as her lover is concerned, harshly. Much whisky, and a money greediness that has swallowed up other passions, have gradually degraded Barry Lynch into a ruffianly sot, with no other thought than, by foul means if fair fail, to become master of his sister’s share in the property their father divided equally by will between them. The brother’s drunken ferocity proves the death-warrant to his schemes. Driven from home by Barry’s barbarity, Anty Lynch finds a humble refuge beneath the roof of Mrs. Kelly, Martin Kelly’s mother. To these extremities, the relations between Fanny Wyndham and Lord Ballindine naturally present no parallel. Even with them, however, the course of true love runs at least as roughly as is its proverbial wont.