My Lords of Strogue Volume Ii Part 4

'I have yet to learn,' she said with hauteur, 'what business you have to interfere with me. I am of age, and not your daughter.'

'You will not presume to disobey your father, I suppose?' the countess inquired coldly. 'Though I ought rather to be surprised if for once you are dutiful.'

'My duty is to my mother's people!' Doreen murmured absently.

'I told you once before,' her aunt went on, unheeding, 'that you would disgrace the family and break your father's heart. For both reasons it is my distinct business to interfere with you. The friends whom you have chosen to make, are rushing like sheep to the slaughter. You shall not be one of the flock if I can help it. I have spoken gravely to your father about you; and so has some one else--Lord Clare.'

'Lord Clare!' echoed Doreen, astonished. 'What does he know about me?'

'Too much,' retorted her aunt, dryly. 'He showed me, just now, a delectable sight in the armoury, a discovery which cost him five hundred guineas. For shame! It is kindness to deem you mad.'

'How did he know of the pikes?' startled Doreen inquired.

'Through Terence,' replied my lady, shortly--for she knew not how much or how little her niece and son were mixed up in this affair, and always instinctively avoided talking of the latter to the former.

There was a long pause, during which the dowager continued to eye her niece.

'Aunt, I will go with you to Donegal!' Miss Wolfe said slowly, her large eyes peering with vague terror into s.p.a.ce. 'I think now I will take a walk, for I am rather upset;' and quietly taking her garden-hat from the bench hard-by, she knotted its ribbons under her chin, and disappeared between the beech hedges of the rosary.

There are moments in most lives when so sharp a pang shoots through our hearts, that we feel there is nothing left but to seek a remote covert and wait for death. Such strokes age us suddenly and surely. To few is it given to become old by slow and imperceptible steps. We remain in the solitude of our covert without speech; almost without feeling. Presently we perceive that we were mistaken about death (for the White Pilgrim comes not for the bidding); and emerge into the world again, apparently the same as before--young outwardly, and smooth-browed, but really altogether different. Poets have sung much of broken hearts, at which cynics have scoffed, time out of mind.

Hearts have broken under a sudden mental shock, but seldom. They are more usually turned inside out and changed.

Doreen had just received such a shock as calls imperatively for solitude. Then the snake in the gra.s.s--the Judas--was Terence--her own cousin! Rapidly she walked through the rosary, and out by the wooden gate into the open--away--inland across the fields, for miles.

She was surprised to find that she felt more grieved than was at all necessary, in that the snake was Terence. Only a few minutes ago she had been praying heaven to unmask the villain, with the laudable intention of pointing him out to the reprobation and contempt of the society. But Terence! The open-visaged, careless youth who exasperated her, as a woman, chiefly because he was prodigal of promise which was not likely to be fulfilled. He had been so importunate in blundering puppy fashion (really almost as ridiculous as Ca.s.sidy), heaving absurd sighs, carrying on his intermittent wooing in so ludicrously nave a manner, as to provoke scorn in so high-spirited a mistress. Looking within herself, she discovered that behind her light estimate of his amatory ravings there was a genuine liking for the lad. Could she have been entirely mistaken in him? Could her judgment have been utterly at fault when she decided, that if feebly endowed by nature, he was at least honest and true? For the more she considered the subject as she trudged across country, the more she felt that it would be indeed grievous if that fine open face, which had looked so n.o.ble in its indignation on account of the martyr Orr, should turn out to be only a grinning mask.

Terence the Judas--the betrayer of the innocent--the snarer of the unwary! Terence, her cousin, whose jocund visage she admitted to be rather dear to her. If he proved so base a scoundrel, in whom then might an earnest soul place trust? Was his perfidy a fall, or original sin? She remembered how she had read wise thoughts in books, wherein sages had explained that our nature is unstable, liable to trip--that none can resist temptation if clothed in the fittest garb. Is not the prayer which should be oftenest on our lips, 'Lead us not, O G.o.d, into temptation?' Women are perverse, choosing always the left one, when they ought to take the right turning; and with the perversity of women Doreen chose at once to accept the most distasteful phase of the situation. She took it for granted that Terence was in the wrong, instead of more prudently suspending her judgment till his return from France.

The feet of her cousin were cloven. He wore a tail and smelt of brimstone. She stood still beside a paling as she thought of him, and shook it in a rage with both her hands, while a vague feeling of uneasiness came over her in that she should care so much that Terence should prove the Judas. Yet was she not quite justified in her dismay?

Was it not natural that her faith in truth and goodness should be thrown out of gear by such low calculating turpitude? Clutching the gnarled paling, the unhappy lady bowed her face on it and burst into sobs which shook her to the centre.

Five hundred guineas! That was the sharpest of the many thongs which smote her. She had declined to look at the sordid motive--it was so very mean and vile. But now it clamoured with open palms at the gates of her brain, and shouted deafeningly. Vulgar money troubles are at the bottom of everything that's base! What a pity that there should be such a thing as money! Five hundred guineas! How small--how miserable a sum! He was always in debt, she knew: to such easy-going creatures as he always seemed to be, debt was a state of nature. But could he have sunk so low as this? Was he capable, for five hundred guineas, of suddenly a.s.suming a n.o.ble love of motherland, which was a farce--of laying a gin for the feet of persons who had never injured him--nay, whom he reckoned among his dearest friends? For the wretched price of five hundred guineas, could he look her--his cousin, almost his sister--in the face, and endeavour to steal her heart, that he might stick it on a pole for the amus.e.m.e.nt of fellow-traitors? Traitor!

Arch-traitor--wretch! Tears having come to her relief, Doreen sat on the gra.s.s and wept, and felt like the wounded beast within the covert.

Piecing sc.r.a.ps together, with the key which my lady had furnished, many cloudy matters became clear. My lady was proud and prejudiced, but her pride revolted against treachery. If not, why had she suddenly warned her niece to see that her correspondence was not tampered with?

Who should tamper with it? Not Jug, or Biddy, or Phil. They were children of the soil, who knew not treachery. How could my lady know of any tampering of theirs? No! It was against Terence--the son whom my lady loved not--whose unworthy proceedings filled her aristocratic soul with repugnance--that she had warned her niece. Lord Clare knew the very wording of Theobald's last letter--through whom? Through Terence, of course--for five hundred guineas--alas! alas!

All of a sudden a new idea struck Doreen, and she sat up, her cheeks blanched and tear-stained. The traitor had worked well for the degrading pittance. He had succeeded in hoodwinking the society as well as herself. He was now at Brest, with every secret in his possession--every detail--every aspiration--cut and dried--in cold black and white--and she it was who had despatched him. The Emmetts, Russell, Bond, were doomed men. Their young lives were unconsciously sacrificed by her. There was no end to the blood for which she would be answerable. The cycle of her frenzied thoughts came back to the point at which she started. She had been trifling like some innocent child with burning brands which had scorched her. Not herself alone.

Her life was her own, for better or for worse. When she should be called to appear before the throne to account for her deeds, she would be asked, 'Why broke you your father's heart for a chimera? why did you lead Emmett, Russell, Bond, by your wiles to the scaffold? Who were you to set yourself up as a teacher? To lure honest men, like a siren, to destruction? What could her faltering answer be? I meant well. I acted for the best. I was presumptuous. I am sorry.... Can regret undo the injuries which are due to our presumption? No. The wretched Doreen was crushed by an overwhelming sense of her own littleness and failure. There was nothing for it but to kneel down and cry, 'I have sinned;' to clasp her sorrow and take it to the north, there to hold vigils of unfruitful repentance, whilst praying humbly to be released from earth. The wilds of Glas-aitch-e should be her covert. Into it she would creep like a stricken doe. If the White Pilgrim would obey her summons, with what grat.i.tude she would cling to his filmy raiment! If he refused to hearken to her pleading--why then she must, kneeling on the stones, endure unto the end with such meekness as a vengeful heaven might vouchsafe to her.

The wild paroxysm past, she got up and returned with trailing feet towards the Abbey. Her limbs were aching from contact with dank herbage: her brogues and stockings soiled with clinging mud. A drizzling veil was settling on the earth, which looked, as far as ken might reach, dun-toned and colourless. Raising dazed eyes, she beheld a slim figure moving with rapid strides, and recognised young Robert from afar.

What could he be doing? Was he also crushed in spirit, as weary of the world as she; wandering in search of peace? or on one of his many missions of private charity?

He had been to the Abbey in quest of her; was told by a garden-lad that she had pa.s.sed through the wooden postern, and had tracked her wanderings from hut to hut.

'They are going too far!' he said abruptly, with bent brows, as he turned to walk back with her. 'Already the squireens are abroad, imitating their fellows in the north. Dublin's in a ferment. It needs but the coming of the French to settle the affair at a blow. Every magistrate has received orders to raise twenty men to preserve the peace in place of the militia, should these be ordered to the coast.

But they overreach themselves. Decent people are so furious at the tactics of Lord Clare, that even the militia are dying to turn against the Government. Ca.s.sidy says so, who should know, seeing that he keeps up a friendship with the Castle. I speak to-night at the Debating Club. Look at these notes,' he added, smiling. '"Recipe to make a Rebel! Take one loyal subject uninfluenced by pension; burn his house over his head; murder his wife and babes before his eyes; march away with such plunder as you choose to save from the flames----" But what is the matter? You look ill!'

'I am leaving Dublin almost at once,' Doreen said, 'and am glad of it.

If there is one power which has the gift of withering up the soul, it is treachery! I am sick of the world. Go to your brother. Tell him the cause is lost. One who held all their secrets has betrayed them--for five hundred guineas; that is their value in his eyes.'

Here the girl broke into wild laughter--she who never laughed; and Robert looked at her in surprise, with a sense of coldness, creeping.

Then, with a hectic spot upon each cheek, she eased her breast with words; recounted all she knew, and much more which was conjecture, though in her perturbed state she was not aware of it. Explained that they were all dupes of Terence's false _bonhomie_--that he had coldly and deliberately played a part; had, as it were, eaten their bread and salt, and then stabbed them in the back. In the midst of the hideous recital, her voice choked in a great gulp, and clasping her hot face with her hands, she burst into a flood of tears.

Ardent young Robert was shocked, but not convinced. Terence! whom every one loved for his bright eyes, through which shone forth an honest soul. To whom Robert and fellow-undergraduates looked up as to a _preux chevalier_ in the matter of grouse-shooting and the beguiling of the wily trout. He could not believe such a thing, and would not.

Lord Clare was capable of any amount of lying. His ways were so tortuous that they were difficult to follow. His spies were legion, who ferreted out everything. No doubt Phil and Biddy had been watched; they had billed and cooed too loudly as they had handed the pikes over the wall. Terence was unduly heedless about money; his friends frequently declared that he didn't know its value. It was absolutely out of the question that he should suddenly be tempted to do so crafty and mean a thing. As for the delegates of the society being betrayed and their secrets known, there was nothing new in that. Had they not, months ago, been arrested at his own chambers, their papers seized, themselves arbitrarily imprisoned, and afterwards as arbitrarily released? He could not fathom the tactics of the executive, the youth was forced to confess, for their movements seemed planned to circ.u.mvent each other. The rank and file were being captured by dozens and hanged, while the commanders and organisers of the scheme were permitted to remain at large.

It was not unpleasing to Doreen to hear her cousin defended; but she shook her head.

'If the French were to come now,' she said, 'they might set things right; but then they must come in force; and Terence, having gone to Brest, would probably clinch the irresolution of Hoche, and effectually decide him not to come at all. Verily, the world and its affairs were vexation of spirit; conspiracy a disheartening game; Ireland an accursed land, foredoomed to eternal misery.'

By the wooden postern which gave access to the rosary, stood a group of peasants, who humbly bowed to Miss Wolfe, then returned to the dirge of lamentation which her appearance had interrupted.

'Jug Coyle, what is the matter?' Doreen inquired; for she recognised in a heaving heap before her the shattered remains of that lady.

'Whisht! acushla!' a man whispered. 'Let her tears flow. Sure she's burned out of house and home. Her cabin's desthroyed. The sodgers--bad luck to 'em!--have taken her bit of bacon and the dhrop of potteen the quality used to loike, and thin they began to turn up the pratey-garden, and Biddy gave a yelp and wanted to run to the Little House, but the blagyards gagged her mouth with an ould rag, and tuk her away screeching.'

'The "Irish Slave" destroyed?' inquired Robert.

'Yes, your honour,' replied the man, lowering his voice as he glanced around. 'But they didn't find much. Phil, Masther Terence's man, came down from the Abbey to give the office, and most of the pike-heads were tossed over the wall, till we can put 'em back to-night. Wake up, Jug, and spake with the lady. Sure the shock has druv the collough crazy. When the thatch was all ablaze we went up to Madam Gillin, who always has the kind word and bit and sup; but she said she could do nothing, and bade us come to you.'

'To me!' echoed Doreen, bitterly. 'Am I not too a Catholic, and helpless?'

'But it's your father's the great gintleman,' urged the fellow coaxingly, as he twisted his corbeen between his h.o.r.n.y hands. 'If ye'd spake the word, acushla----'

'My father!' Doreen groaned, breaking abruptly through the knot of suppliants. 'What can he do? He is sending me away. I'll pray to G.o.d for you; but He has been deaf this long while.'

CHAPTER IV.

WE PIPED UNTO YOU.

So the "Irish Slave" was destroyed by fire, and its hapless occupant, finding that no redress might be obtained through, Miss Wolfe, crawled to the Little House, where she was taken in by its kind mistress, who in her turn received, a few minutes later, a visit from Major Sirr. He pointed out with deferential politeness to the good-humoured dame that, as a Catholic possessing property, it was scarcely wise to harbour traitors, whereat the stout lady broke into her hearty laugh and invited him to lunch.

'Is it me, meejor, that causes the Secret Council to shiver in their shoes,' she asked, 'with a Protestant daughter to go bail for me, and meeself, all but the fine airs, an aristocrat? Not but what Ollam Fodlah, mee ancestor, was better than the best of the stuck-up crathers! I'm a "no-party woman," as all the world knows, just as the buckramed bag-o'-bones at the Abbey foreninst us is a "no-popery woman." Let my ould collough be; she was my nurse, and won't trouble any one for long. Come in. Ye shall taste a gulp of my fine claret just to show there's no spite betune us--the very same, on my word of honour, as Justice Carleton and Judge Clonmel have such a tooth for.'

And Major Sirr pledged his hostess in his best manner, with a smirk on his thin features and a worldly twinkle glimmering from under his bushy brows, and departed presently to report at the Castle that Madam Gillin was a staunch loyalist who had miraculously escaped the taint which poisoned most ladies of her creed.

When he had departed, the good lady's face lost its dimples and grew long.

'That wicked fellow will bring them all to the gallows,' she muttered to herself, frowning at some one she saw in her mind's eye who was not Major Sirr. 'And my lips are sealed! It's a fearsome thing to have to watch what's going on, and not dare speak a word of warning. If he only didn't know that I take Norah to the ma.s.s! Yet I'm bound to do my best for the child's soul, though my lord would have her brought up a Protestant. Sure Father Daly said I must bring the pet to chapel for her soul's sake as well as mine.'

Then Madam Gillin, who was dividing the sheep from the goats in the matter of faded frippery in an untidy cupboard, resigned herself to unwonted meditation, with lines of gravity about her mouth which seldom rested there, as she recalled the day some time since, when he whom she had looked upon as friend unveiled himself to her in drunken frenzy as a viper; when she had stared into his big jolly face with an expression that had sobered him, while he explained that for the future she must do as she was bidden, or else all sorts of penalties would swoop upon her for tampering with the religion of a Protestant.

On that occasion he fairly terrified her, and she kept the secret as to his being a viper in disguise, though it sickened her to think of it o' nights. She recalled the scene now for the thousandth time, and shuddered; and her best frock slipped out of her hands on the dirty floor while she contemplated that genial pleasant boon companion as she and only a few others knew him. Norah found her standing absently among crumpled gauzes when she returned from a jaunt to Dublin, and rallied her mother on her looks, with a smacking kiss like a whip-crack.

'Have ye heard a banshee, mamma?' she asked. 'See! I've done all the commissions. Feathers a foot long, lovely flowers for our skirts, and gloves to cover the elbow. I met Shane upon the road, and we went together; but I could not wheedle him into coming to the ball, though I did my best. He said the grand ladies frightened him--bored him more likely. He's mighty timid for a Blaster. It's a wonder he's not afraid of _me_.'