Extracted from Lord Kilgobbin by Charles Lever, published by Appletree Press
Lord Kilgobbin
by Charles Lever
Chapter One - part 6
From what has been said, therefore, it may be imagined that Kilgobbin was not a model estate, nor Peter Gill exactly the sort of witness from which a select committee would have extracted any valuable suggestions for the construction of a land code.
Anything short of Kate Kearney's fine temper and genial disposition would have broken down by daily dealing with this cross-grained, wrong-headed, and obstinate old fellow, whose ideas of management all centred in craft and subtlety–outwitting this man, forestalling that-doing 'every-thing by halves, so that no boon carne unassociated with some contingency or other by which he secured to himself unlimited power and uncontrolled tyranny.
As Gill was in perfect possession of her father's confidence, to oppose him in anything was a task of no mean difficulty; and the mere thought that the old fellow should feel offended and throw up his charge–a threat he had more than once half hinted–was a terror Kilgobbin could not hav faced. Nor was this her only care, There was Dick continually dunning her for remittances, and importuning her for means to supply his extravagances. "I suspected how it would be," wrote he once, "with a lady paymaster. And when my father told me I was to look to you for my allowance, I accepted the information as a heavy percentage taken off my beggarly income. What could you–what could any young girl–know of the requirements of a man going out into the best society of a capital? To derive any benefit from associating with these people I must at least seem to live like them. I am received as the son of a man of condition and property, and you want to bound my habits by those of my chum, Joe Atlee, whose father is starving somewhere on the pay of a Presbyterian minister. Even Joe himself laughs at the notion of gauging my expenses by his.
"If this is to go on–I mean if you intend to persist in this plan–be frank enough to say so at once, and I will either take pupils, or seek a clerkship, or go off to Australia; and I care precious little which of the three.
"I know what a proud thing it is for whoever manages the revenue to come forward and show a surplus, Chancellors of the Exchequer make great reputations in that fashion; but there are certain economies that Ii close to revolutions; now don't risk this, nor don't be above taking a hilll from one some years older than you, though he neither rules his father's house nor metes out his pocket-money."
Such, and such like, were the epistles she received from time to time, and though frequency blunted something of their sting, and their injustice gave her a support against their sarcasm, she read and thought over them in a spirit of bitter mortification. Of course she showed none of these letters to her father. He indeed only asked if Dick were well, or if he were soon going up for that scholarship or fellowship,–he did not know which nor was he to blame,–"which, after all, it was hard on a Kearney to stoop to accept, only that times were changed with us! and we weren't what we used to be"–a reflection so overwhelming that he generally felt unable to dwell on it.
Peter Gill's control is not confined to 'Lord Kilgobbin's' tenants: Kate Kearney's position is explained further here
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