My Lords of Strogue Volume Ii Part 2

'It's a match they'll be making of it--Lord love the purty pair!'

bawled the nettled giant. 'The gintleman's to be complimented who's thus favoured.'

'Is this true?' Curran inquired. 'Has she been persuading you to make a fool of yourself? I turned you out of my house, though I love you like a son, to withdraw you from what might prove a dangerous atmosphere. Maybe I'd better have kept you after all.'

'Perhaps, if I succeed in this mission, she may be mine!' Terence muttered in ecstasy, oblivious for the moment of the fate of the condemned.

'And for such a vague _perhaps_,' Curran retorted in disgust, 'these goslings will risk their lives!'

CHAPTER II.

DOREEN'S PLANS.

It is proverbial that the preaching of the wisest sage may be reckoned as naught in its influence on a young man's fancy when opposed by a siren's smile. Doreen had never, during the years of her sojourn at the Abbey, tried to enlist Terence on the side of her oppressed people. It would have been disloyal to have done so. But now that his long-careless heart had taken the flame of its own accord, it was not likely she should attempt to extinguish it. Having communed with Tom Emmett, she directed her admirer to ride forthwith to Cork, ostensibly on professional business, slip thence with secrecy across the water to see Hoche, and then return with as little delay as might be. He was to tell the French general that ten thousand soldiers were expected--that less than five thousand would be useless--that arms without soldiers would be refused, because a rising would be the immediate consequence of a landing of arms, and it was not thought desirable to turn the attempt, which should be made in force, into a desultory species of Chouannerie. Further, he was to employ all his eloquence to ensure a speedy start, declaring that Erin yearned to break her bonds, that a small nucleus of regular troops was all that was required to start with, as the peasantry were prepared to rise if sure of being properly led.

These orders being succinctly given by a demure girl with rich dark hair and a touching sadness of expression, was it probable that the diatribes of an insignificant little person with s.h.a.ggy elf-locks and questionable linen should meet with even common courtesy? Curran argued with his junior contrary to his own convictions, striving by forensic imagery to save him from the vortex if he could; declared that nothing but ruin could possibly come of a rising; that the popular cause was hopeless; that the French would possibly make a temporary disturbance to spite perfidious Albion, but that so soon as it should suit their interests, Erin would be blandly restored to the avenger, to reap the reward of her temerity. What sympathy could France have for Ireland? What recked the Directory, or Hoche, or Buonaparte (the clever young general who was becoming celebrated), whether Erin was a slave or not? Other nations as interesting as the Irish were slaves, and would remain so. Just now Hoche was warm upon the subject because he was jealous of Buonaparte and eager for rival laurels. Granted that he were victorious, he would soon weary of what to him must be a worthless and precarious possession, would carry it to market in a treaty of peace, and surrender it to expiate by yet more grinding servitude the false hopes which were born only to perish. But Mr. Curran (who didn't quite believe all this in his heart of hearts) might as well have talked to the trees in his own Priory orchard.

'You'll be dragged farther than you intend,' he urged. 'Your vanity will induce you to take an active part, and then you'll be punished by the revolting slavery entailed by a mob command.'

It was all in vain. Terence went away, and his chief gave out that he had despatched him on business to Cork.

The unfortunate Orr was hanged, and the result quite pleased the chancellor. A thrill of horror ran through all but the most callous.

The oath anent the bough was taken by hundreds in desperation. The toast 'Remember Orr!' became a watchword. People shook their heads, wondering what would come of it. Riots grew more frequent, which were suppressed or not according to caprice. Major Sirr's Battalion of Testimony lived on the fat of the land, for there was no difficulty in unearthing traitors, now that the spirit of recklessness had gone forth. Lord Clare pretended to be pained. The ingrat.i.tude and wickedness of his countrymen--their hardened fits of daring--made him blush, he vowed. The country was in danger, the yeomanry must bestir themselves, England must send regiments too steady to be undermined; if the people were so disgracefully unruly, martial law would have to be proclaimed. He deeply grieved to suggest such a thing, but the majesty of the executive, whose gravest sin was leniency, must at all hazards be respected.

The capital was quite in a fever, shivering as pigeons do in their cote when they feel the electric current. Every one was looking towards France. Was that armament which was a.s.sembling at Brest intended for their coasts? If the fleet were to appear in the offing, how would Government behave? It seemed evident enough how they would behave, for troops kept pouring in from England. Hessians, Highlanders, Englishmen, under command of Lord Carhampton, arrived by shiploads, and, spreading over the counties, were placed at free quarters in the cottages. Dublin and the great towns undertook to look to themselves. The armed squireens, yeomanry, fencibles, strutted in scarlet in the streets, clothed in the bully airs which characterise brief authority.

The burning zeal of Orangeism was let loose in all its excess of wildness, and a fanatical orgy commenced--a saturnalia of fiends who acted in the name of religion--which endured for two whole years. Men, who in the past had made themselves objectionable to Government, were not forgotten now. Even the semblance of moderation was tossed aside.

They were delivered to privileged marauders, to be kept under lock and key and ultimately sacrificed in the 'confusion of the times;' whilst as for private enemies, nothing was easier than to charge such an one with treason, and lay him low by purchasing the good offices of an informer. People went openly to the Staghouse, where the 'band of testimony' were kennelled, just as in our modern days they go to Scotland Yard to engage the services of a detective.

In the military mania which revived (how different from the Volunteer movement! the first was an impulse towards good; the latter a carnival of demons), everybody sported a uniform. The Bar chose its special facings, so did the 'prentices, so did the adherents of each opulent grandee. My Lord Powerscourt armed his tenants, but retained them in the hills of Wicklow, declaring that his contingent was not to be made a rabble of aggression. Even the Catholics deemed it prudent to don the red coat in self-defence, as a disguise; and went forth rebel-hunting, sometimes to lay violent hands on their own brethren.

But the warriors somehow invariably took the wrong road, or discovered, upon reaching their destination, that gossoons had run forward to give warning. The Right Honourable Claudius Beresford, not to be outdone in zeal, set up a riding-school on Marlborough Green, which later on a.s.sumed infamous notoriety as a torture-chamber. Here the yeomen met to try their horses, to accustom them to the sound of drum and clarion, to break a friendly bottle. Dublin a.s.sumed the aspect of a garrison; the country of a vast camp.

Still my lord-chancellor vapoured airily of 'martial law;' not that it signified much practically whether such were declared or no, but it was as well to accustom polite ears to the words before they became legal facts.

The arch-conspirators being unaccountably set free, without any promises having been extorted from them, they naturally set to work at once to take advantage of the general simmering, and the peculiar condition of society was favourable to the attainment of their ends.

More than ever now was the anomaly made manifest which has been hinted at before, namely, the promiscuous mixing in convivial intercourse of persons of the most opposite views. At time-serving Arthur Wolfe's, for instance, Clare hobbed and n.o.bbed with the disaffected; such, that is, as had not gone so far as to frighten the well-meaning attorney-general. At Strogue Abbey, again, he chatted quite amicably with Curran, who was never weary of abusing him in Parliament, or strolled in the rosary with Ca.s.sidy, who was known to be a United Irishman. But the strangest scene of all was the Beaux-walk in Stephen's Green, more especially on a fine Sabbath, when the _beau monde_ appeared in glory. The mall, where carriages paraded, ran at that time along the north side, between a low wall and an impregnable haha, or d.y.k.e; and there, on a Sunday afternoon, might be seen the strangest medley of muslins and chip hats, fine coaches and swinging noddies, mingled with cross-belts and helmets and military plumes and gear; might be heard the wildest diversity of opinions openly broached and bandied. Horse-races took place sometimes as an ostensible reason for the gathering, and none marvelled to behold those who were prisoned traitors a week ago arm in arm with Government officials, or to hear acquaintances joking each other on the inconvenience of getting hanged. Thus it failed specially to shock young Robert as a piece of bad taste, when, walking with other undergraduates, if a friend rallied him about his brother's newspaper, and the certain fate which must befall its owner; though it must be admitted that such was not the case with Sara, who moaned and shuddered with dismay, like a rabbit in a den of serpents. Tom Emmett's newspaper was openly published now twice a week, and no one interfered with it, though it sought out the joints of Lord Clare's harness; and the chief of the Directory was weak enough to imagine that his foe had grown afraid of him for his boldness in pointing at injustice. Other newspapers were gagged or bribed; why should his be privileged? Tom Emmett and Bond and the rest held their secret meetings as heretofore, and strolled in the Beaux-walk, and talked treason, like hot-pated Patlanders, to the top of their bent, oblivious of the claw of the cat, because it remained uplifted--poor guileless band of mice! They met frequently and talked earnestly, and squabbled not a little among themselves, for their opinions were divided on a point--a most important point, upon which unanimity was essential--no less a one than the grand basis of future operations.

Bond and Russell and others argued that misgovernment had come to such a pa.s.s, that it might be endured no more without merited disgrace.

These bully squireens, these venal, brow-beating grandees, must be shown, before more harm was done, that there must be a bound to their arrogance.

If a tide be bravely stemmed, it will rage awhile; then settle within its limits. Were the French coming? French or no French, the people must rise; observant Europe would applaud, for even unfortunate heroism commands respect and pity; pike-heads by thousands lurked beneath potato plots, pike-poles in myriads were stacked under thatched roofs. Surely the spirit of the ancient kings would animate their sons in this emergency!

Most of the conspirators were for doing something definite at once.

Tom Emmett and his brother were in favour of delay.

'We have waited so long,' Tom said, 'that a few weeks more will make little difference, save in the increased exasperation of the people.

Lord Clare was obliged by public opinion to set us free. We must do our duty as men. With French a.s.sistance success is certain; without it, more than doubtful. Wait, at least, till Terence Crosbie's return--the young aristocrat who has taken up our cudgels. We shall be none the worse for waiting; and now that he has been baptised into the true cause, his presence will be valuable in our councils. The labourer who entered the vineyard at the last hour was not deprived of his reward. We are terribly weak in military capacity; maybe Heaven, who has awakened so late in the day a scion of a n.o.ble house, may point to him as a future leader. Wait at least and see him.'

Young Robert enthusiastically seconded his brother's motion, for his instinctive dread of bloodshed impelled him to postpone the decisive moment; and he was possessed, besides, with a strong belief in Terence, whom he had known intimately during his sojourn at the Priory. Russell and the others obstinately combated the point, urged thereto by youthful jealousy and wounded self-esteem. True, none of the council were of mature years; but to be lectured and prated at by this boy Robert, who was yet a student in Alma Mater, was an indignity which it behoved them to resent.

Doreen, who, after her noteworthy row upon the bay, threw aside the appearance of apathy she had a.s.sumed, saw this new danger with concern. Torn well-nigh to death already by factions of many kinds, was Erin to sit by and see her last forlorn hope, her last bodyguard of champions, scattered by the same curse? Miss Wolfe became seized by a frenzy for galloping across country. Her horses were constantly brought back to the stable with their coats turned, their flanks heaving, their skins reeking with foam.

'No doubt the girl was crazed,' my lady averred, as constantly as she marked the grooming of the animals from her bedroom window-seat. 'Why could she not ride like a well-brought-up young person in the green alleys of the Ph[oe]nix, or amble on the mall of Stephen's Green?'

My lady did not know that Doreen met separately, at certain cottages, the different members of the Directory; that she prayed and exhorted each one, as though he were alone to blame, to wisdom and a sacrifice of paltry vanity; and that she came away from each interview with such a dread of impending failure--a distrust of these budding generalissimos--that it required the most reckless gallops, with a dangerous fence or two _en route_, to calm her nerves sufficiently to meet my lady's scrutiny with the accustomed mask of composure on her face.

At the Abbey she had little to complain of now, for all were too busy to take much heed of her. Shane, with a prospect of departing northward, which rumours of acc.u.mulating outrages seemed to make more and more urgent, shilly-shallied and delayed, and selected guns and fishing-rods, and invited little knots of Cherokees, and spent more and more time at the Little House, as though the effort to tear himself away from Dublin delights and beloved Norah were too much for his resolution.

Under the circ.u.mstances he was not likely to trouble his cousin with attentions; and Doreen breathed freely again so far as her private affairs were concerned, for she perceived that this project of her aunt's was fading into a vision which never would and never could be realised. Any one who watched might see that Shane was desperately smitten with Norah, and Doreen was in no wise jealous. Norah was a nice girl, Doreen determined, who was worthy to become a countess, and she would help to make her happy as much as she could.

My lady's fancies were mere whimsies. If the marriage could be accomplished, she would of course come in time to like her new daughter-in-law. Many domineering old ladies object to eligible maidens, merely because they have not fixed on them themselves.

Miss Wolfe, in her regained independence of thought, felt half inclined to carry it beyond her own concerns, to speak openly to Shane, to go and call on Norah, or meet her as if by chance, and declare that she had come over to the enemy.

But the little love-idyl was destined to an interruption, whether she interfered or not; for Glandore was pledged to go to the north--to tear himself from the arms of metaphoric Capua. Would he remain faithful to his lady-love, when removed from the direct influence of her attractions? The notion of his going, Doreen remembered with a quiet sense of fun, was her own; and selfishly glad she was to have been so inspired, for away at Ennishowen his thoughts would be diverted into a new channel. Even if he did not learn there to forget Norah, his mind would certainly be freed from vague visions of his absent cousin. Thus she, in any case, would be safe. Situated as the concerns of the patriots were, all her own energies would be needed on the spot--for without some one to threaten and cajole, the bundle was sure to fall to pieces.

She would be glad, therefore, when the establishment at the Abbey should break up, when all the vans and horses and carriages should migrate to Donegal, leaving her--a waif--behind, with nothing to attend to but serious business.

Of course when my lady and her son started for Ennishowen, she would return to her old home in Dublin. She would inhabit once more her little bedroom in Molesworth Street, and would make herself so necessary to her father by fond artful prodigalities of love and tenderness, as to prevent him from ever allowing her to leave him any more. It was all very well, when she was a child, to send her to abide with her aunt, but now she was a woman, and her place was with her father. Then a small inward voice whispered, which caused her heart to beat quick time:

'What if, by my loving influence, I might change at length his views?

He is weak, but so kind and excellent; he leans on my aunt because hers is the more masculine nature of the two; and he yearns for support and countenance. Why should he not come to lean on me? My will is as strong as hers--our mutual affection unstained by a difference, unruffled by a ripple! Oh! if I could persuade him that there are n.o.bler aspirations than mere gathering of gold. That if, instead of money-grubbing to make me a fortune (well-meaning, tender father!) he would spend all he has freely for his country's sake, I would love him all the more dearly for my beggary; what if, by constant dropping on the stone of obstinacy, I could bring him to feel this--how happy, how truly happy, we might come to be together!'

Then, in less exalted moments of reflection, she felt that she deceived herself, that this might never be; that if she elected, in theory, to embrace for a holy cause the vow of poverty in her own person, she had no right to force her convictions upon a man whose gla.s.s of life was more than half run out, whose life ran in a groove, and who had so distinct a predilection for flesh-pots. Well, without going to extremes, it would be a joy to guide him just a little, to prevent his truckling too glaringly to Castle influence. If only he were not attorney-general and prosecutor for the Crown!' When the French expedition shall have arrived,' she thought, 'and swept this wicked Government into the sea, how intense a satisfaction will it be to say to the Irish Directory, "Spare at least my father, for my sake!

I have worked heart and soul in the cause; you owe me this boon, the only one I ask of you!"'

Certainly, from every point of view it seemed necessary for the young lady to separate herself from the Abbey and her prejudiced aunt with all speed, and a.s.sume her proper place in her own home.

Hence for more reasons than one she looked forward to the forthcoming break in the Abbey _menage_ as to the commencement of a new era of reviving hope and usefulness, and quite longed for Shane's departure with all his bags and baggage.

CHAPTER III.

THE CLOVEN HOOF.

My lady's preparations were completed at last, and, thanks to her maternal supervision, so were those of her favourite son. Though so close at hand, she went little into Dublin; for the sight of many strange uniforms reminded her of a past time, the a.s.sociations connected with which she did her best to bury. She knew only, therefore, by rumour what was pa.s.sing--by the reports of the _Gazette_, by conversations with Lord Clare. As for Curran, there was nothing to be got from him. He was as surly and morose as possible; said rude things about the Orange Societies; told her details of atrocities which, she felt sure, must be exaggerated; quarrelled with her about the scarlet woman; showed signs of becoming as bigoted on one side as she half admitted herself to be on the other.

She grew almost reconciled to the necessity of going northwards, for Shane's conduct gave her serious alarm. He almost lived at the Little House, and she saw the possibility, if the journey were delayed much longer, of his declining to go at all. For all Norah's influence was evidently thrown into the scale against her, and she bitterly regretted now having shot off that arrow at Crow Street.

The artful damsel was striving to instil into her lover's mind that it was cowardly to go away at this juncture; and it was only by pretending to have private intelligence from the chancellor that his mother could soothe his _amour propre_ to sleep.

She was credibly informed, so she declared, that Paris spies had told Dublin spies, who had whispered it at the Castle, that the French fleet would certainly make for the north. It stood to reason they would not sail into Cork Harbour or Dublin Bay, where their foe was ready to receive them. Not a bit of it. They would make for the lonely, rock-bound coast of Donegal or Antrim, and young Lord Glandore would cover himself with glory by appearing at the head of the yeomanry in the neighbourhood to hara.s.s the landing of the troops.